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williamdclt commented on Michelangelo's first painting, created when he was 12 or 13   openculture.com/2026/01/d... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
Maken · a month ago
Demons look like that in Medieval and Renaissance paintings. "Red dude with horns" didn't become the standard depiction of demons until much later.
williamdclt · a month ago
In modern representations, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find red-dude-with-horns. Seems like we shifted towards hot-dude-with-something-off (Lucifer series, Good Omens), when we do see red-dude-with-horns I feel like it's meant to be somewhat ironic/on-the-nose (south park, preacher).
williamdclt commented on Electronic nose for indoor mold detection and identification   advanced.onlinelibrary.wi... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
sschueller · a month ago
I find it interesting that we seem to have mastered what the human eye can do and even go beyond it with like infrared but somehow we still can't build a chip that can "taste" or "smell".
williamdclt · a month ago
I think at least _part_ of the reason why is that it's just a whole lot less useful? There's tons and tons of applications for image and video and the automated analysis of it (for art, documentation or business purposes), whereas taste/smell capture and the analysis of it doesn't have that many useful use-cases (the article points at one of course, I'm not saying there's no use-case but much fewer). So we put a whole lot of effort and money into developing it, which didn't happen for smell.
williamdclt commented on It's hard to justify Tahoe icons   tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icon... · Posted by u/lylejantzi3rd
queenkjuul · a month ago
I finally talked my company into letting me swap out my MacBook pro for some little Dell. After the last year of updates, my Mac has stopped resuming from sleep reliably, everything is ugly, they took the already barely usable (imo) finder and system settings and found exciting new ways to make them worse. Sadly corporate security means os updates were not optional.

I've never really liked macOS but it feels like someone at Apple was hired just to make it even less likable for me personally lol

williamdclt · a month ago
> already barely usable (imo) finder

been using a Mac for years, and to this day I don't know how it's possible to navigate directories using Finder. It only has shortcuts for a few folders by default (photos, documents...) and doesn't have a button to navigate to the parent folder. I have literally no idea how to get to my home directory, I need to use the CLI

williamdclt commented on The World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems   yaschamounk.substack.com/... · Posted by u/thatoneengineer
crazygringo · 2 months ago
It's not that peculiar if you assume all countries follow the same type of happiness distribution that is simply shifted/stretched lower or higher.

Then, the relative size of a bottom or top absolute threshold is highly meaningful. Even if it's a fraction of a percent, populations are huge and suicide rates are not rounding errors at all -- they're actually quite statistically significant.

And as macabre as it is, suicides are objective facts mostly unaffected by methodology, and unaffected by translation issues, cultural differences, etc.

This is why suicide rates are actually a powerful mental health statistic, just like height is a powerful physical health statistic, at the population level. There's obviously still a lot both of these metrics don't say, but the fact that they are highly objective makes them extremely valuable.

williamdclt · 2 months ago
> if you assume all countries follow the same type of happiness distribution that is simply shifted/stretched lower or higher.

That's a pretty strong assumption, seems more likely that there's variation at the extremes than not. For example, if a small percentage of the population deals badly with extended nighttime in long winters, then it'll affect Finland's most-unhappy stats (and suicide rates) without meaning much for the average happiness.

williamdclt commented on The World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems   yaschamounk.substack.com/... · Posted by u/thatoneengineer
phyzix5761 · 2 months ago
I agree but does the happiness report actually measure all of that with their single question:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?

williamdclt · 2 months ago
Yes? "The best possible life" covers pretty much exactly these socioeconomic factors for most people. Is there any of these factors that you think is not covered by this question?
williamdclt commented on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges   news.bloomberglaw.com/ban... · Posted by u/nreece
zugi · 2 months ago
I disconnected my Roomba from the network right after programming its schedule. It still works great, following the same schedule for 7 years.

I recently bought a cheap Chinese roomba clone. It comes with a remote control so you don't need to connect it to the internet. I do have to press a button to start it but it works great.

If you care about your privacy, choose products appropriately and/or take 5 minutes to protect yourself. Most people don't seem to care, which is their choice.

williamdclt · 2 months ago
> Most people don't seem to care, which is their choice.

Most people don't have the required knowledge to make an educated decision about whether to care. In fact, most people are not even aware of the question, let alone have the knowledge, let alone caring, let alone making a choice.

williamdclt commented on Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
mastax · 2 months ago
You may be shocked to hear that there are no seas in the Himalayas.
williamdclt · 2 months ago
Well ackshually, Himalayan salt does come from a sea (although this sea has disappeared a long long time ago) so it's not _technically_ wrong
williamdclt commented on Louvre to hike ticket prices for most non-EU tourists by 45%   bbc.com/news/articles/cly... · Posted by u/geox
deadbabe · 3 months ago
I’d wager that you could 10x for non-EU tourists and still make more money and have way less crowds leading to a better experience for all.
williamdclt · 3 months ago
> better experience for all

for the well-off*

williamdclt commented on A trillion dollars (potentially) wasted on gen-AI   garymarcus.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/flail
teraflop · 3 months ago
It would be nice if they could burn it on something that didn't require them to buy up the world's supply of DDR5 RAM, and triple prices for everyone else.

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

williamdclt · 3 months ago
that might be literally the least of my concern regarding gen AI in today's world
williamdclt commented on OpenAI needs to raise at least $207B by 2030   ft.com/content/23e54a28-6... · Posted by u/akira_067
Hamuko · 3 months ago
Yeah, I have a hard time believing that there’s a massive demand for AI-generated videos and images. Like, why would the news industry want to generate images and videos with AI? It’s not news. The advertising industry maybe, but even then it’s probably not your top brands that go full in on it. If you see that all of Apple’s adverts are generated with AI, it’ll probably lower your brand perception.

We already put more importance on handmade goods vs. factory-made, even if the latter is cheaper and better quality. I have my doubts about humanity collectively embracing content generated from prompts by black boxes.

williamdclt · 3 months ago
> Yeah, I have a hard time believing that there’s a massive demand for AI-generated videos and images. Like, why would the news industry want to generate images and videos with AI? It’s not news. The advertising industry maybe, but even then it’s probably not your top brands that go full in on it. If you see that all of Apple’s adverts are generated with AI, it’ll probably lower your brand perception.

(disclaimer: I don't work in ad and don't know more about it than the next person)

Whether the end product (the ad) is AI-generated or not is almost irrelevant. The whole production chain will likely be AIfied: to produce one ad you need to go through many concepts, gather reference images/videos, make prototypes, iterate on all that, and probably a ton of other things that I don't know about... The final ad is 1 image/video, but there's been dozens/hundreds of other images/videos produced in this process. Whether the final ad is AI-generated or not, AI will almost certainly (for better or worse...) have a major place in the production chain.

u/williamdclt

KarmaCake day3569February 4, 2017View Original