it’s basically “customers use crappy laptops -> we decided to make them use web browsers” which sounds insane to me because web content IS the reason why tons of otherwise unnecessary upgrades are done in recent 10 years or so

We do processing on the cloud because our customers use crappy laptops. We use a web browser because:

• convincing customers to get approval for our app is hard (corporate IT), whereas they already have a recent browser
• it’s faster to get the result we want
• our dev env (macOS) is different from our target platform (Windows); this is because it’s easier to work around our IT Dept than with them (and nobody on the team likes Windows), and our servers are Linux, and macOS is close enough for BE dev
• audits are easier - just need to test the API, not the whole desktop app platform since auditors trust the browser

The same is true for my the other project I mentioned. If your business is largely B2B, then browser apps are a much easier sell than a desktop app. We’re getting a little pushback as we’re breaking into a new market, so we’re turning to Tauri to provide a desktop-app experience, a different keep the web app for the rest of our customers.

I love my ereader.

This argument is very different from the argument I’m talking about. Lemmy isn’t a government, nor does it attempt to fill that role (as much as my instance’s “Agora” community wants to think it does), so whether Lemmy is successful doesn’t give any insight into whether a more decentralized form of government could be successful.

communitarianism produced Lemmy

That’s a pretty generous description.

A more accurate description, IMO, is that two people wanted a safe space for their extremist community (tankies), and they had a working version at the time that a lot of people were frustrated with Reddit. Those two are still running the project, and they moderate their instances very tightly. But many people outside that community came and decided to make something good out of it, which is why additional instances popped up run by people with different motivations from the original pair.

So I don’t think communitarianism produced Lemmy, at least not initially, but it did help turn Lemmy into what it is today.

We win when Lemmy is the superior option for enough people that we actually start bleeding Reddit out.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think we have already won in that people choose to stay here over returning to Reddit or whatever social media platform they came from. That said, active users on Lemmy seems to be steadily dropping, which is a bummer, but I’m still able to have decent discussions here, so it’s working for me.

And that’s why the tariff situation pisses me off. I get that we don’t want subsidized EVs from China to ruin the local EV market, but we should at least take the tech that works and implement it here. Maybe we can estimate the amount of subsidies the Chinese government gives its EV market and charge that on import, idk, I’m not an economist so I don’t know what that would look like. I just know I want an inexpensive EV for commuting and I only need to go about 50-60 miles in a given day (call it 100 if I need to run some errands after work). If I can get that, during winter, for a low price, I’ll buy.

The Kia Soul is just over $20k, but not EV.

The Nissan Leaf is about $30k w/ ~300 mile range (my local area’s cheapest is $36k, but I guess that’s because they don’t carry base trims), and a replacement battery is something like $5-10k, depending on size. That’s pretty close to that $20k target, and given that the Soul is around that $20k price, I could see a manufacturer getting a sodium-ion based EV with limited range (say, 100-150 miles) right around $20k.

The Slate truck is targeting $25k or so, so if the battery prices are similar to the Leaf, that’s your $20k vehicle right there.

We are not anywhere near close to AGI.

That’s my point.

The major breakthroughs I’m talking about don’t necessarily involve consciousness/sentience, those would be required to replicate a human, which isn’t the mark. The target is to learn, create, and adapt like a human would. Current AI products merely produce results that are derivatives of human-generated data, and merely replicate existing work in similar contexts. If I ask an AI tool to tell me what’s needed to achieve AGI, it would reference whatever research has been fed into the model, not perform some new research.

AI tools like LLMs and image generation can feel human because they’re derivative of human work, a proper AGI solution probably wouldn’t feel human since it would work differently to achieve the same ends. It’s like using a machine learning program to optimize an algorithm vs a mathematician, they’ll use different methods and their solutions will look very different, but they’ll achieve the same end goals (i.e. come up with a very similar answer). Think of Data in Star Trek, he is portrayed as using very different methods to solve problems, but he’s just as effective if not more effective than his human counterparts.

Personally, I think solving quantum computing is needed to achieve AGI, whether we use quantum computing or not in the end result, because that involves creating a deterministic machine out of a probabilistic one, and that’s similar to how going from human brains (which I believe are probabilistic) to digital brains would likely work, just in reverse. And we’re quite far from solving quantum computers for any reasonable size of data. I’m guessing practical quantum computers are 20-50 years out, and AGI is probably even further, but if we’re able to make a breakthrough in the next 10 years for quantum computing, I’d revise my estimate for AGI downward.

Eh, probably not a few centuries. I could be, IDK, but I don’t think it makes sense to quantify like that.

We’re a few major breakthroughs away, and breakthroughs generally don’t happen all at once, they’re usually the product of tons of minor breakthroughs. If we put everyone a different their dog into R&D, we could dramatically increase the production of minor breakthroughs, and thereby reduce the time to AGI, but we aren’t doing that.

So yeah, maybe centuries, maybe decades, IDK. It’s hard to estimate the pace of research and what new obstacles we’ll find along the way that will need their own breakthroughs.

The difference between devs and webdevs

There is no difference, webdev is someone who solves problems with web tech, mobile dev is someone who does mobile apps, embedded dev works with low level components, etc. It’s all development, and often the two will mix.

For example, I worked at a startup using C for embedded stuff, Go for the server stuff, and web tech for the FE. Rust wasn’t out yet, so C was the best option for interfacing with the board components (in this case a math module for our signal processing), Go was a good mix of performance and ease of training new devs, and a web FE was the lowest barrier to getting our customers using our product (basically a high end IOT device). We built a small native FE for certain simulations, and eventually moved it to a server with a web FE.

At my current role, we build a reporting and simulation app for a niche industry. We do everything from simple forms to 3D rendering to simulations that take hours to complete (most are 15-45min). Our customers use crappy laptops, so doing the processing locally isn’t an option (they probably don’t have enough RAM anyway), so we’re going to need a server. Because of that, we decided to build it as a web app. We still have native components (some simulations use C++, another was Fortran until recently, etc), and they’re maintained by Ph.Ds in our field because the hard part isn’t the coding (our JS specialists could handle that, they’ve built a 3D app in the last few months with complex transformations and calculations due to business login needs), but knowing the math behind it all, hence the researchers.

Not all web apps are overengineered crap because they hired a dev team to build a static site, there are apps like the two I mentioned that do interesting things and happen to use web technologies.

That’s the thing, mine aren’t easily replaced and it’s not because they live in DC much of the year, but because my district is gerrymandered, and that seems to be true for most districts in the country. Only a fraction of races are actually competitive after the primary, and there’s not going to be a primary to replace a sitting rep unless they piss off the party.

If we simply made state politics more impactful than federal, parties would move their focus to rigging state elections.

The issue, IMO, is there’s too much incentive to rig politics. Government interferes so much in all aspects of life and is so powerful that it will absolutely attract money. If we shift more of that to the courts, now that money would need to focus on everyday people, which I think is an improvement.

What’s wrong with webapps?

I get that many could be static pages, but you’re comparing web vs desktop. And in that case, I prefer web most of the time. Why? It works the same everywhere, and I can probably access it just fine on my phone without having to get their mobile app, which probably has fewer features and more telemetry.

Web doesn’t make sense for everything, but it’s far better than desktop apps for relatively simple use cases. If the app isn’t performance sensitive and doesn’t need to store a ton of data, web is my preferred platform, especially since I’m a Linux user and would likely need to run the app through WINE instead.

I buy used cars exclusively. A used EV that retails under $20k new will be very affordable used.

My point isn’t that used cars don’t exist under $20k, my point is that sodium ion batteries are supposed to be way cheaper than lithium ion batteries, and they’re more than sufficient for a commuter. I want those available where I live.

We need to shift power back to the local levels; only that way we can personally ensure our wellbeing.

I agree with the conclusion, but not how you got there.

My Senators and House rep live pretty close to me, like 15 minutes away driving, so I could go visit them if I wanted. They spend a lot of time in DC, but they come back several times throughout the year.

The issue, IMO, isn’t where they sleep, but that they can’t easily be removed from office. Our districts are gerrymandered to the point that the main party usually wins with 20%+ margin. Why care about constituents if reelection is all but guaranteed? They could live next door to me and that wouldn’t change their mind. If I assassinate a rep, I’ll go to jail and the replacement will likely be worse. They’re more accountable to their party and donors than their constituents.

But yes, I very much do believe decisions should be made locally because party affiliation matters far less. My local legislature behaves very differently from the federal Congress, not because of where people live, but because they’re much more easily replaced and they can’t hide behind other reps from other states and argue that their decisions are careful chess moves to get what really matters passed.

What do you mean? Webdevs are devs, just within a specific platform. And like any dev, they can suck or be great.

This makes a lot of sense.

It would be nice if multiple people reviewed each game, and then they discuss before publishing a review. That’s one thing I really like about Digital Foundry, though they focus way more on technical details than overall gaming experience, but it’s very fun to see what each reviewer has to say about a given title.

I’m not talking about my personal preference on rating, I’m talking about broad community reviews.

For example, Cyberpunk 2077 is a notorious example. It got generally favorable reviews from reviewers, and the public release was a completely broken pile of trash on console. Reviews didn’t even get the console release, yet still gave it a positive review because the experience on PC was decent. How can we trust reviewers if they don’t actually try the game? The terms of the review embargo alone should have pushed reviewers to give it net negative reviews since they’re not able to actually try the game.

For strict review differences, look at Starfield, which got 85% by Metacritic, and Steam reviews are more like 55-60%, and it got hit hard by independent reviewers shortly after launch. That’s a pretty big mismatch.

GTA V was pretty close to a perfect score, but actual reception was a bit lower (80% or so on Steam right now). That’s not a huge difference, and it could be due to frustration about not having a sequel for over a decade, but it does seem that some studios get more favorable reviews/more of a pass than others.

That said, a lot of the time reviews are pretty close to the eventual community response. It just seems that reviewers overhype certain games. I haven’t really seen much evidence where critics review a game much below where the community reception is, but I have seen cases where reviewer scores are quite a bit higher than the eventual community response.

Maybe there’s nothing suspicious going on, it just sometimes feels that way.

Are you talking from a regulatory standpoint or from an “I like indies so I’d give it a pass” standpoint?

At a certain point, profit can turn to status, like with the super wealthy. Elon Musk seems to be pushing for $1T, not because the extra money matters, but because he wants the status of being the first to get there.

But if you look at the quiet majority, many people will take more stressful roles because of the higher earning potential. So they’re increasing their output specifically to get a better standard of living. Those types tend to be contractors, small business owners, and early stage startup employees.

If you look at the alternative, such as China or the USSR, those who rise to the top aren’t those with the highest productivity, but those most able to play the political game. If you look at a small engineering company, it’s generally those with the most technical capability who rise through the ranks, but once you get to larger companies, higher roles generally get taken over by business types, i.e. those best able to play the business side of the political game. It’s the same process, just with different mechanisms for gaining power.

Any proper solution here needs to fix the problem of the wrong people getting to positions of power. The economic system isn’t particularly relevant, other than setting the rules of the game. The best solution, IMO, is to make the rules of the game such that you get punished hard if you don’t know what you’re doing (i.e. you’re a business type running an engineering firm firing top talent to cut quarterly costs), and you get rewarded if you do. If we actually put execs in jail for problems their businesses create, I think we’d quickly see companies like Boeing change their leadership to one that will prevent problems, such as someone w/ an engineering or safety background.

That’s why I think government and the economy should be as separate as possible, and in fact in an adversarial relationship. Bureaucrats should be rewarded for catching crime in the private sector, and private companies should have real incentives to keep everything above board. That can’t happen when politicians are literally funded by the companies they’re supposed to be regulating.

Right, used cars are feasible, I’m talking about new cars. A sub-$20k new commuter should be possible w/ sodium ion batteries.

Is that actually enforced? If so, what’s the explanation for reviewers giving suspiciously high reviews to AAA games?

But weren’t game reviews essentially ads paid by the publisher? Because that’s what it looks like from the outside, since the reviews are increasingly poor quality that largely focus on positives and ignore negatives. Some games that completely flopped due to technical issues got glowing reviews by journalists, probably because they were paid handsomely for that review.

I think game journalists should avoid advertisements as much as possible because once they rely on it, the temptation to allow their content to be colored by whatever attracts advertisers is too much. They should be solely focused on attracting readers, which means they need to be reader supported.