Hi 30, I’m dad

USA sux

“Gradient descent” ≈ on a “hilly” (mathematical) surface, try to find the lowest point by finding the lowest point near an initial guess. “Gradient” is basically the steepness, or rate that the thing you’re trying to optimize changes as you move through “space”. The gradient tells you mathematically which direction you need to go to reach the bottom. “Descent” means “try to find the minimum”.

I’m glossing over a lot of details, particularly what a “surface” actually means in the high dimensional spaces that AI uses, but a lot of problems in mathematical optimization are solved like this. And one of the steps in training an AI agent is to do an optimization, which often does use a gradient descent algorithm. That being said, not every process that uses gradient descent is necessarily AI or even machine learning. I’m actually taking a course this semester where a bunch of my professor’s research is in optimization algorithms that don’t use a gradient descent!

They created a good product so people used it and there were no alternatives when it got shit.

They created an inherently centralizing implementation of a video sharing platform. Even if it was done with good intentions (which it wasn’t, it was some capitalist’s hustle, and its social importance is a side effect), we should basically always condemn centralizing implementations of a given technology because they reinforce existing power structures regardless of the intentions of their creators.

It’s their fault because they’re a corporation that does what corporations do. Even when corporations try to do right by the world (which is an extremely generous appraisal of YouTube’s existence), they still manage to create centralizing technologies that ultimately serve to reinforce their existing power, because that’s all they can do. Otherwise, they would have set themselves up as a non-profit or some other type of organization. I refuse to accept the notion of a good corporation.

There’s no lock in. They don’t force you off the platform if you post elsewhere (like twitch did).

That’s a good point, but while there isn’t a de jure lock-in for creators, there is a de facto lock-in that prevents them from migrating elsewhere. Namely, that YouTube is a centralized, proprietary service, which can’t be accessed from other services.

Literally every corporation does or attempts to do the same thing.

Exactly. Every single corporation is evil and should be dismantled 🔥🔥🔥. This is just one of a thousand reasons to do so.

“Absolute evil” is a bit of a stretch, but it’s YouTube/Google’s fault (by closing off and centralizing their video platform) that it is impossible to go elsewhere for videos.

Is like saying oh you don’t like your local librarians? you’re free to make your own library!

I’m probably being pedantic here but you kinda can, e.g. Little Free Libraries, although the reason isn’t “my local librarians suck”, it’s closer to “more libraries please”.

Okay well being free to do something doesn’t magically make it a real option.

Agreed, but I fail to see how, with enough consent from the user base, how moving to another existing server is not an option.

Are there even any exceptions to that that aren’t entire communities agreeing to move together off instances?

I’m not aware of any off the top of my head, but it absolutely does not seem implausible that we could move this community if the need arises. Entire communities moved off of Reddit during the boycott; I don’t see why we can’t do that again within the platform if the need arises. For the most part people are okay with the moderation here, as am I, but the minute that changes people will flee somewhere else.

For literally the entire time I have been on lemmy I have heard laments about the centralization of comms on lemmy.world and seen attempts to mitigate it but every pie chart just shows lemmy.world with more of the pie because growing a comm on small servers isn’t simple!

Hard agree there. I’m not sure how to fix it.

We’re failures as shitposters when a shitpost generates that much drama

Hard disagree lol, I love when a shitpost actually gets people to debate about important things. So many people would just never think about that stuff otherwise.

That happened on reddit all the time, minus the instance part. Remember /r/freefolk?

The “instance part” is absolutely huge. If I wanted to, I could go start a /c/lemmyshitpost on SDF Lemmy [1] with a completely new set of rules [2], particularly a set of rules that possibly would violate Lemmy.world’s TOS or possibly even the law in Lemmy.world’s jurisdiction, but not SDF’s or their jurisdiction’s laws.

It’s not a big deal for the average user until the day you run afoul of the server admins.

[1] As of writing this, SDF does not have a /c/lemmyshitpost.

[2] I’m not interested in doing that lol, this is just a hypothetical. I’m annoyed at this most recent decision but nowhere near ready to leave over it.

No just one user lol

I think moderating comments needs to be banished.

Nah because then someone could just post (for example) medical gore in a “safe space” and it’ll just get downvoted but not removed.

It wasn’t gore, but do you remember the ThuleanPerspective (I think?) trolls from a little while back, spamming that racist photoshopped Simpsons comic by commenting it on literally everything? That effort was neutralized in the short term by deleting those comments on the spot, and then the users who posted them.

It is absolutely a useful tool, but like most useful tools it can be abused.

I’m happy and having lots of sex /s

In Internet culture, shitposting or trashposting is the act of using an online forum or social media page to post content that is of “aggressively, ironically, and trollishly poor quality”.

Imagine not being allowed to do any trolling in a shitposting community.

Okay but you can always make your own shitposting community on your own instance with your own rules if you feel so strongly against the rules. That option simply was not available on R*ddit. The point of Lemmy isn’t that no one abuses their mod and admin powers ever, but that the system is set up so that you can just go to another Lemmy server, which simply was not available on R*ddit if you pissed off the site admins.

Although I personally find Lemmy users nicer and moderation better on average, their character is not the point. It is merely the result of an imperfect but better system than R*ddit.

1. Then the mods should be honest about why he’s being banned in the modlog.
2. Him (charitably) being an overzealous meanie in defense of an honest brand of feminism does not make him a shitlord.
3. Sometimes people need to be dunked on for both their own good and the good of the community, obviously myself included. A perfectly appropriate venue for some gentle dunking is a shitposting community.

It’s a shame that the thread got locked. It was getting heated, but IMO that’s a good sign that what you’re talking about actually needs to be debated.

reason: Admitting to being a troll: “I’m an agent of chaos.”

Absolutely the limpest reason to temp ban someone from a shitposting community. From the context it was obviously an offhanded joke, not an actual admission of someone trying to disrupt the community.

IMO I think people are gonna have to start swearing more online since it’s kinda hard to get commercial LLMs to swear.

Sorry I ate it

It pains me to inform you all that KnowYourMeme seems to have the best coverage of this story.

Internet users and news outlets have speculated that the sperm cups are aimed at Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz and his wife’s infertility issues. The Walz’s had their children using in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The cups therefore could be a way to champion Vance’s natural ability to have children. However, many Americans (regardless of political affiliation) struggle with infertility and use IVF.

Despite being humorous, it’s currently unknown if the J.D. Vance cup photos are real. For one, the original X user that posted them, @UsaCamy, has a profile that’s raised suspicions among many, as pointed out by X user @elisethoma5.

So basically, if this turns out to be a real thing, then they’re dunking on people who want to have kids but have infertility issues. Which … that’s just kind of a ridiculously petty thing to do.

If they were from a different instance

Does SDF have a bad rep? I know that not literally everyone on SDF is a leftist, but I do think a lot of us are.