fluoridation (u/fluoridation)

fluoridation commented on Popular Japanese smartphone games have introduced external payment systems english.kyodonews.net/art... · Posted by u/anigbrowl

roflyear · 8 hours ago

The app store obviously gives value to the app developers. When you put your app on the store you agree to the 30%.

fluoridation · 2 hours ago

You didn't answer my question. Why can't the optimum include some fee dodging? I agree that the app stores provide value to the developers, but it's also true that apps provide value to Google and Apple. If no one developed any apps, no one would use iOS or Android. Therefore it's possible that Google and Apple benefit more from an app that dodges fees but brings in users than from neither having the app nor those users.

fluoridation commented on Romhack.ing's Internet Archive Mirror No Longer Available romhack.ing/database/news... · Posted by u/pharrington

wolrah · 3 hours ago

> I thought ROM hacks were just modified ROMs, not programs that modify ROMs.

Distributing a modified ROM is as much copyright infringement as distributing the base ROM itself, so generally hacks are distributed as just the patch file and you have to provide your own copy of the base ROM and patch it from there.

It sounds like this site is packing the two together, and the patchers are causing the flagging issues. That also to me seems like the simple solution is to not do that and just distribute the patches without the software and have a note in the description pointing to a separate source for the patcher.

> Surely an automatic patcher is a pretty trivial piece of software, system-wise. It just reads a binary file and writes out a different binary file after doing some in-memory manipulations. Why would a an AV flag such a program? I don't buy this explanation.

A virus that wants to infect other executables on the system is going to have patching code in it where it's relatively rare in "legitimate" software so it makes sense for antimalware heuristics to find it suspicious.

fluoridation · 2 hours ago

>A virus that wants to infect other executables on the system is going to have patching code in it where it's relatively rare in "legitimate" software so it makes sense for antimalware heuristics to find it suspicious.

Sure, but what an AV is going to look for is code that manipulates executable files, not random binary files. If the patchers are designed to apply patch files to ROMs rather than having the patches embedded then it makes even less sense that they get flagged.

fluoridation commented on RFC 9839 and Bad Unicode tbray.org/ongoing/When/20... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

Waterluvian · 10 hours ago

Can a regular expression be used to restrict Unicode chars like the ones described?

I’m imagining a listing of regex rules for the various gotchas, and then a validation-level use that unions the ones you want.

fluoridation · 3 hours ago

Why would you need a regular expression for that? It's just a list of characters.

fluoridation commented on Romhack.ing's Internet Archive Mirror No Longer Available romhack.ing/database/news... · Posted by u/pharrington

shazbotter · 4 hours ago

A ROM does not. A ROMhack, however, might. A ROMhack injects code into a ROM, the same way a virus or Trojan might inject code into an executable.

fluoridation · 4 hours ago

I thought ROM hacks were just modified ROMs, not programs that modify ROMs. In any case, that still wouldn't make much sense. Surely an automatic patcher is a pretty trivial piece of software, system-wise. It just reads a binary file and writes out a different binary file after doing some in-memory manipulations. Why would a an AV flag such a program? I don't buy this explanation.

EDIT: Furthermore, what's the proposed workflow? Does the Internet Archive run AVs over its collections? There's no way, right? That would be a massive compute expense.

fluoridation commented on Popular Japanese smartphone games have introduced external payment systems english.kyodonews.net/art... · Posted by u/anigbrowl

roflyear · a day ago

That is exactly what happens if they can enforce payments: "you don't get to be on our store if you're bypassing this"

But it isn't what is happening if they are staying on the platform's marketplaces and also bypassing payments. There is no "market" effect there.

Not saying I agree with the 30%, but third party app stores exist. That is the market avenue (and no one uses them).

fluoridation · a day ago

"There is no market effect"? Why do the market effects disappear if some of the players don't play completely according to the desires of other players? Why couldn't it be that the optimum includes some amount of fee dodging?

fluoridation commented on U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel cnbc.com/2025/08/22/intel... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys

sgnelson · a day ago

Everyone is talking about "bailouts" and "owning a company that the government funds."

This isn't about that at all. This is about the breakdown of the rule of law, a unitary executive bypassing all other branches of government and demanding a private enterprise give itself over to the government.

If you don't think there was an "or else" as part of this deal, you're largely mistaken. If you don't think that there will be other questionalbe demands placed on Intel in the future from this government, you are largely mistaken.

But y'all go ahead and can keep arguing over whether we should "get something back" from this deal. Because that's really going to maker ameraica graet agian.

fluoridation · a day ago

Why would the government need to "demand" to buy a piece of a publicly-traded company? Is 10% of Intel more than what is being traded in the public market?

fluoridation commented on What is going on right now? catskull.net/what-the-hel... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

BitwiseFool · a day ago

>"I'm pretty sure I'm that guy on some topics."

The use of 'pretty sure' disqualifies you. I appreciate your humility.

fluoridation · a day ago

I don't know, man. I really don't know. I can't tell whether I'm really good at making inferences from tidbits of information, or really good at speaking confidently.

fluoridation commented on What is going on right now? catskull.net/what-the-hel... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

BitwiseFool · 2 days ago

>"It didn't help that the LLM was confidently incorrect."

Has anyone else ever dealt with a somewhat charismatic know-it-all who knows just enough to give authoritative answers? LLM output often reminds me of such people.

fluoridation · a day ago

I'm pretty sure I'm that guy on some topics.

fluoridation commented on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears telegraph.co.uk/business/... · Posted by u/pera

HarHarVeryFunny · 2 days ago

It's a specific architecture. Of course there are (massive amounts) of feedback paths, since that's how we learn - top-down prediction and bottom-up sensory input. There is of course looping too - e.g. thalamo-cortical loop - we are not just as pass-thru reactionary LLM!

Yes, there is a lot more structure to the brain than just the neocortex - there are all the other major components (thalamus, hippocampus, etc) each with their own internal arhitecture, and then specific patterns of interconnect between them...

This all reinforces what I am saying - the brain is not just some random graph - it is a highly specific architecture.

fluoridation · 2 days ago

Did I say "random graph", or did I say "general graph"?

>There is of course looping too - e.g. thalamo-cortical loop - we are not just as pass-thru reactionary LLM!

Uh-huh. But I was responding to a comment about how the brain doesn't do something analogous to back-propagation. It's starting to sound like you've contradicted me to agree with me.

fluoridation commented on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears telegraph.co.uk/business/... · Posted by u/pera

HarHarVeryFunny · 2 days ago

Actually that's not true. Our neocortex - the "crumpled up" outer layer of our brain, which is basically responsible for cognition/intelligence, has a highly regular architecture. If you uncrumpled it, it'd be a thin sheet of neurons about the size of a teatowel, consisting of 6 layers of different types of neurons with a specific inter-layer and intra-layer pattern of connections. It's not a general graph at all, but rather a specific processing architecture.

fluoridation · 2 days ago

None of what you've said contradicts it's a general graph instead of, say, a DAG. It doesn't rule out cyles either within a single layer or across multiple layers. And even if it did, the brain is not just the neocortex, and the neocortex isn't isolated from the rest of the topology.