Hi, I’m sbird! I like programming and am interested in Astrophysics and all things space. I also have a hobby of photography.
My previous main account was on Lemmy at sbeak@sopuli.xyz
- 8 Posts
- 35 Comments
They are supporting devices deemed obsolete by manufacturers and are working towards making your phone last longer, I would say that’s pretty environmentally conscious. The “eco” TLD makes sense, I think, when you look at their goals.
sbird@retrofed.comto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.ca•Are you a laptop or desktop computer person?English
0·5 days agoI’m on a laptop, since I don’t need the power of a desktop, and I like being able to use the same computer at home and on the go (e.g. school, and soon university!). I’m running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma, and it’s fantastic! My specific device is also one of those 2-in-1s (with a touchscreen OLED with amazing colours!) that can flip into a tablet, which is very handy. No plans to upgrade it any time soon, but the battery has degraded a lot (58% health), so it might need to be replaced soon.
Desktops make more sense for people who do more graphically intensive stuff (gaming, video editing, 3D modelling, etc.), and if you don’t need the portability of a laptop, desktops are great since they are upgradeable, quieter, and full of I/O.
sbird@retrofed.comOPto
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What are some of your favourite rock/punk bands around the world?English
0·5 days agoI mean, all band names are made up in the end of the day. A lot of them are based on various pop culture references (think characters in movies or TV shows), for instance, the French band Luke’s name comes from the American movie “Cool Hand Luke”, none of the members are actually called Luke.
Die Toten Hosen literally means “the dead trousers” in German, and it’s slang for “boring” (though their music is the opposite of that!), while Die Ärtze means “the doctors” in German.
Ska-P is short for “ska punk” which is a mix of ska and punk (and it’s an awesome genre to listen too!)
Kino is Russian for “cinema”, and there’s a variant of the “absolute cinema” meme that instead used a picture of Viktor Tsoi (the GOAT) with the words “absolute Kino”
sbird@retrofed.comto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Realistically, what do people plan to do on the Moon and Mars that requires a permanent, or long term human presence there?English
0·5 days agoPutting bases on the Moon means we can do more studies, experiments, etc. outside of Earth, particularly tasks that are difficult to complete by current rovers. Human physiology in low gravity situations, lunar geology, possibility of water and life outside of Earth, that sort of stuff. I’ll also echo what others have said about how the Moon could become a launching base for future explorations, given its lower gravity and lack of an atmosphere.
There isn’t a conspiracy by lizard men to set up a Death Star, this is driven by the curiosity of humanity and our desire to explore the unknown. The “race” to have the first base between Americans and Chinese is, like during the Cold War between the former and the Soviets, a push to be the first, trying to show that they are ahead in terms of technology and science. In a nutshell, it’s driven by curiosity and, at least partly, national pride.
Not a recommendation, but you should look for a big fan, not a small one. The bigger ones are a lot quieter, as they don’t need to spin up as fast to push the same amount of air. The tiny fans sound like jet engines, please don’t get one of those!
Alternatively, you could go with a fan that you flap with your hands, they usually fold up neatly and you don’t need to go looking for a USB outlet. Perhaps not as convenient though
If you didn’t know, CoMaps has a desktop Linux and macOS version! I believe GNOME Maps (also on Linux) recently got better offline maps support too
sbird@retrofed.comto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Why does all AI graphic design have the exact same style?English
0·6 days agoI would imagine that it’s the easiest for the model to produce. Bold colours, clear and distinct shapes, that sort.
It doesn’t help that the companies have scraped the entire internet (which is a can of worms in terms of both legality and ethics) and then some, so it will mimic the advertising strategies employed everywhere (again, bold colours, clear shapes, etc.)
sbird@retrofed.comto
Steam Hardware@sopuli.xyz•[Frame] It's in your best interest to cancel your reservation, trust meEnglish
0·6 days agoHonestly the actual hardware is very competent for the price, and a lot of the technologies Valve is showing off (foveated streaming, Windows PC games on ARM Linux VR, etc.) are awesome!
It’s more how people are comparing the price to the heavily subsidised Meta doodad that is less open, has similar or worse specs (especially when it comes to streaming it seems), and is owned by Meta (selling your eyeballs to advertisers is not something I would like to do personally)
sbird@retrofed.comto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Is there something like join-lemmy.org that doesn't list tankie instances?English
0·6 days agoMore people who kiss the toes of dictators. Those who ignore the atrocities of Stalin and similarly despicable figures, “tankie” as in the tanks used to silence civilian protests
Anarchists are far left, but they would be very insulted if you called them tankies (their whole thing is anti-authoritarianism!)
sbird@retrofed.comto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Is there something like join-lemmy.org that doesn't list tankie instances?English
0·6 days agoPeople who love authoritarianism and intentionally skip over their atrocities, the term “tankie” refers to how the military (tanks) were used to crush the rebellions of many authoritarian regimes, notably, the Hungarian uprising in 1956 being crushed by the Warsaw Pact and the Tianamen square massacre in 1989 by the PRC.
It’s usually used to refer to supporters of the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, etc. who deny all the bad, inhuman things about those states.
sbird@retrofed.comto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Is there something like join-lemmy.org that doesn't list tankie instances?English
0·6 days agoI think it would be neat if somebody made a community-run list of stable Lemmy/Piefed communities and categorised them by their rules, where the servers are, etc.
As for now, I think it is best to recommend a few instances that you know are reliable. Push them towards more local instances. If they live in Canada, lemmy.ca, piefed.ca, lemmy.blahaj.zone, and piefed.blahaj.zone are good options, I know feddit.org (Lemmy) and feddit.online (Piefed) are both hosted in Germany. sopuli.xyz is hosted in Finland, piefed.nz in Kiwi land, etc.
Or perhaps instances that relate to their interests, like programming.dev or retrofed.com (both are pretty self-explanatory)
sbird@retrofed.comOPto
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What are your ideas for public holidays that can be celebrated by everybody?English
0·7 days agoThe 11th of November is Remembrance day (the whole minute of silence on the 11th minute, hour, day, and month thing was a big thing at my old school)
11/11 is also a big holiday in East Asia, Pocky Day in Japan, Peppero Day in Korea (both because of the resemblance to the tasty stick biscuits), and Singles Day in China (the 1s represent unmarried individuals), all three of which are huge shopping days for Asian malls (similar to Black Friday, but combined with the hyper consumerism of the Asian markets)
sbird@retrofed.comOPto
Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world•What are your ideas for public holidays that can be celebrated by everybody?English
0·7 days agoDefinitely in favour of abandoning the celebration of some old monarch’s birthday.
sbird@retrofed.comto
Steam Hardware@sopuli.xyz•Steam Frame Teardown: We’re Fans. Except of the Fan - iFixitEnglish
0·8 days agoIt’s 2160x2160, so less than 4K (which is 3840x2160) horizontally, since it’s a different aspect ratio but it’s still more pixels. About 8 million for a standard 4K display, while it’s 9 million for the Frame. Even streaming games on such a high resolution display is performance intensive, plus you have the controller + eye tracking
sbird@retrofed.comto
Steam Hardware@sopuli.xyz•Steam Frame Teardown: We’re Fans. Except of the Fan - iFixitEnglish
0·8 days agoVR headsets effectively need to run two 4K displays, one for each eye, and you have all the processing for controller tracking too. You also have eye tracking, they’re doing the whole foveated streaming thing everybody has been gushing over about (it’s really cool tech!). The mobile chip they used is nothing special, it’s a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, a 3 year old smartphone processor (certainly powerful enough to run lighter PC games, but nothing more than that. It’s kind of insane that a phone can even do that nowadays!)
sbird@retrofed.comto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Is it more accurate to call current 'Artificial intelligence' (AI/LLM) as Counterfeit Intelligence?English
0·8 days agoI feel like we should better differentiate between LLMs (the ones that literally tell you to eat rocks), generative models (the ones that are stealing the work of creatives without permission), and the ones that are actually used for neat science stuff, where they are trained on a specific set of data and are doing a specific set of tasks repeatedly in a controlled environment, rather than training on the entire internet and then some and trying to do everything!
I think we should label them as large language models, generative models, and predictive models (maybe? Or maybe “targeted predictive models”?). It’s important to emphasise that all of these, even the useful ones, are not intelligent, they do not understand what they are doing. They are just models of data that do thing go in, thing go out.
sbird@retrofed.comOPto
No Stupid Questions@lemmy.ca•Esoteric linguistic languages that are designed to be incredibly difficult?English
0·10 days agoWell those are actual languages spoken by hundreds of thousands of people (from what I can tell from the Wikipedia article), they certainly aren’t designed to be difficult to learn. Perhaps it’s hard to learn for people who speak English, German, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, etc., but the goal wasn’t to construct a language that is hard to understand.
sbird@retrofed.comto
Selfhosted@lemmy.world•Jami - an alternative to Matrix for family messaging?English
2·11 days agoSo I’m doubly wrong! That’s kind of neat
sbird@retrofed.comto
Selfhosted@lemmy.world•Jami - an alternative to Matrix for family messaging?English
3·11 days agoThat’s actually pretty cool, I’ll be making an XMPP account then. Adding to my collection of chat apps!


Double negatives are fun! It’s a little weird how, depending on the context and language, they can either be positive or extra-negative. “I don’t see nothing!” is often used to mean you can’t see anything, the double negatives reinforce each other rather than cancel out into a positive meaning. Similar for “I don’t have no …” or “we don’t need no …”