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Joined 6 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2020

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  • Very low fee cross-border (remittance) transfers using stablecoins (cryptoassets that are pegged to a fiat currency like the dollar) allow people to avoid getting ripped off by companies like Western Union.

    On crypto platforms like Ethereum that support smart contracts (basically computer programs that run on the blockchain and allow you to automate transfers etc), you can provide liquidity to money markets and asset exchange platforms and earn many times the interest yield (APY) of what you might get at a bank for a similar thing (like 12-60% vs 2-5%). If you’re a real finance nerd you can also access various exotic financial instruments on other platforms that otherwise wouldn’t be available to you unless you were at a huge investment bank or hedge fund and even some that aren’t possible there. These are often called DeFi platforms (Decentralized Finance)

    Another huge use of crypto networks are money laundering and scams though so beware. It’s still a largely unregulated black market. Never put more money into a crypto network than you can afford to lose.


  • DLSS of course does use machine learning (transformers or CNNs) which you can call AI if you want, but I think there may be a bit of a misunderstanding about what this new version is actually doing. If you watch the video or read the breakdown they note that DLSS 5 is NOT replacing or altering the original graphical assets in the game with generated ones. There’s no new textures or 3d models being changed here. It only alters the lighting of the game to add more realistic shadows and reflections etc. It’s just that it does that so extensively that it gives the impression of being an almost entirely different image. Kinda nuts that lighting can do that but that is apparently what is happening here.

    That said, arguments about artistic intent are still very relevant here since it’s a very different look to how the original devs may have intended.






  • Much of this reads like what the Democrats’ strategy has already been for the last 10 years or so with some additional calls towards a “moderate” “centrism” that has not proven to be as popular as left populist policies with most Americans. And a lot of it seems confused or just wrong. For example, Medicare for All is not an unpopular policy. Last I checked it it was polling at around a 60% approval.

    Even if your politics are more centrist, I don’t see how this represents a substantive shift in any way. It’s minor tinkering around the edges or slightly altering messaging. That’s what the moment calls for? That’s the key to success and the way to fight back against an increasingly overt and ascendant strain of fascism in the country? If that’s what the Democratic leadership thinks then one must honestly wonder if the party is institutionally incapable of the change that would need to happen to actually win elections and improve their godawful approval ratings. And based on their donor base, this shouldn’t actually be surprising. The leadership is still utterly captured by and beholden to wealthy interests that would rather jump off a bridge than acknowledge that what Americans want is a party that will fight for meaningful material benefits in their standard of living as this implies meaningfully raising taxes and imposing costs or regulations on their businesses to ensure benefits for regular working class people who are struggling mightily.

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  • As a ‘front page of the internet’ it has been a pretty great replacement for me as it’s where I go each day to just see what’s going on. However, due to the smaller size you do lose a lot of the activity in more niche communities and the sheer volume of posts/comments compared to Reddit. That’s the biggest downside. Still, you also lose the incessant ads/bad UI/UX decisions and ever accelerating late stage capitalism driven enshittification so that’s a big plus.