Our computer systems were never perfect, and the past 80 years formed a causal chain of improvements; Any compromise was always temporary, until knowledge and designs improved.
But I worry that reliance on LLMs bakes in the current compromise or status quo for a much longer duration. Why improve the way we design UI or write programs when the agent works best as long as the underlying dependencies don't get an update?
🥲
Writers: here are ten free and easy ways to add a dash of visual interest to your blog posts without resorting to AI imagery (which signals to readers that your blog post is probably also AI and there’s no need to bother reading it):
1) A thoughtful photo you’ve taken yourself — a nice sunrise you saw, a cool angle spotted on vacation, your pet curled up on the couch, flowers. Play with your phone photo app’s filter settings to nail the tone. It doesn’t need to be particularly related to the post, it’s related to you as a person.
2) An image from Wikimedia Commons that’s somehow related to the subject matter — there are unfathomably many, you can search by keyword. Remember to credit. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
3) A screenshot of a scene you made in a sandbox game such as Minecraft or Animal Crossing
4) A scene you made with toys such as Lego (you can also use free Lego design software such as Bricklink Studio) https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/main.page
5) Play with the effects in whatever image editor you have access to, using your own photos or free-to-use images, to create something a bit abstract and avant-garde
6) Even if you can’t draw or paint very well, you can probably make some pretty cool abstract or collage imagery with whatever art supplies you have around. Dampen some paper and randomly dip watercolor paint onto it and see what happens
7) Those stickers you stashed and never used? Yeah you can make something with them. If they’re individually cut, you don’t even need to peel them, you’ll still find the One True Way to use them one day, I’m sure
8) Shelfies. None will dare question your competence after they see you have a real paper copy of Subject Matter Tome Volumes 1 through 6
9) You can get a lot of mileage out of compositing pre-made video game assets into an image. A good place to start is Kenney’s free and generously licensed 2D assets: https://www.kenney.nl/assets/category:2D and the Tiled editor which is specifically meant for assembling images out of video game asset tile sheets https://www.mapeditor.org
10) the most ridiculously amateurish thing you can scribble on a post-it note or in MS Paint is preferable to AI imagery because it clearly signals a real human cares about the post.
inb4 overreliance on AI sign of early onset alzheimers.
"never touch a running system"
running systems are being touched, hilarity ensues
"with AI, we can now touch a running system 10 times per hour"
Have you ever noticed you can calculate the sequence of perfect squares without doing any multiplication
After several years away from the project I recently finished the last couple pieces of artwork needed to call it done: Mr. Friendly, a Doom mod where you float around, chill out, fiddle with stuff, talk to the monsters, and do nice things for them. Requires UZDoom, works with almost all existing Doom levels. 2018 Cacowards winner in the Machaward category - which is really the most prestigious award, when you think about it! lol
https://jp.itch.io/mr-friendly
I ran @p_malin's program and got this.
Source: https://bbcmic.ro/?t=eHfUl #bbcbasic
📺 Strange New Worlds S4
or as americans say at thanksgiving: bubble bobble!
muskodon
the religious Order of the Magnitude
The noganist movement. Noganists do not even eat plants, for plants can feel sadness and happiness, contentment and pain - anyone with a heart can see this.
Therefore, and just to be sure, noganists only eat molecules electromagnetically reassembled from anorganic matter.
Since this is presently only a scientific dream, noganism is more of an ideal than a practice, but the noganist movement will not cease to research until there is not a single blade of grass getting trampled upon.
reading conversations about simple topics of computer science by clanker zealots on bsky feels like my brain is falling out.
but Bioshock Infinite still looks and plays great. they simplified the mechanics, cut down the controls, focused on the narrative, improved animation, architecture, voice work, and it is noticeable how close this one is in look and feel to Dishonored - except for the absence of stealth, of course.
meanwhile, sylvia and i finished 🎮Split Fiction. that was quite a ride, particularly in the end. pretty good demo of unreal 5's capabilities also; it's an engine you can build all kinds of games with, so that's what they did.
bioshock: not loving the fact that i can't change the gamma in the remastered version, that i had to restart one level because the game has a spawn bug, and that in another level they have me collect 7 things of three categories, walking in circles over and over trying to find stuff without any indication of where it is.
i generally do not enjoy this game much, i have to say.
lidl sold these tomatos as cherry tomatos, but they seem in fact to be two different strains that are closer to regular tomatos.
one of them is nothing worth writing about. not particularly sweet, more watery.
the other, with an egg-like shape, must be an italian strain. meaty, sweet, salty, sour and smokey - i didn't know a ripe tomato could taste smoked. but it's a thing - caused by the lack of an enzyme.
A timelapse of invisible-particle-based cloud movement. Still happy with how these turned out!