nerdy folks who chose a bunny fursona because they like going down rabbitholes

some of my friends are on the butterfly website, but i'm not a fan of the idea that every post and every follow on there is public, with no way to properly hide one's presence

bonan nokton, aminduloj <3

also, kinda messed things up, didn't consider refrigeration before it's too late, now it seems like the best solution is to buy food in exchange for sculptures (which ms. luxemburg can make) from any roaming travelers

somehow i didn't even notice how my #rimworld colonists are slowly turning into the TOS bridge crew, we already got a jim, a doc and a scotty

#php take: it's not a "bad language" that "should have never existed", it's very accessible and i would not shame anyone for building a personal website or small-scale forum using it

same way i would not complain if someone built a cabin in the woods out of logs instead of concrete and rebar

the problem is more systemic

on one hand, we have people being pushed to add more and more and put off boring infrastructure work until later so that if anyone says "hey, this log cabin now has 20 floors, perhaps we should rebuild it with a more durable foundation and out of better materials", the answer is "and how long will that take? we have a business to run"

and on the other, we have people who insist that every building should be built with expectations that one day it will become a skyscraper, and having more reasonable expectations is for wimps, and expect everyone to have a degree in engineering and a carefully thought-out expansion plan for a single-family home in the suburbs

been playing #rimworld, and it seems like it has a really complex system for determining which nicknames the characters get, because instead of them being random, they all seem to make sense for that character

one of mine is "skunk", she was a test subject and, as a result, has lacking social skills, no sexual attraction to anyone and enjoys being in the nude, so it makes sense she'd probably smell

found a hostile crash victim who's nicknamed "onesan" (presumably お姉さん for "older sister), and she's a woman with a japanese first name, so it also makes sense someone would call her that

while it is well known that the chinese invented gunpowder, it is commonly believed that they used it for fireworks, rather than any combat purposes

more recent evidence, however, suggests that they were also pioneers in use of proper cannons, with people arguing that some of its applications make it completely accurate to say that the Han shot first

consider: cute people wearing huge glasses

hot take: generative AI is a symptom, not the disease

the disease is people being pushed by their superiors to produce more without proper regard for quality or long-term success

it is people wanting to "get rich quick" without realizing that they'll be competing against millions of other people with the same desire

it is tech company executives holding governments hostage because they know that any significant action against them can cause a severe economic recession

if you're left-wing enough, you could even say the problem is capitalism

i wonder if part of the reason why generative AI has seemingly infiltrated FOSS circles so much despite, in many ways, being against the ethos of free software, is because of a difference of perception

"free software" as the basic concept appeared at a time where a program was more of a singular thing -- often written in C or some easily available interpreted language, relying on a few common libraries and the OS's system calls, and was small enough that the concept of a program being "complete" or "finished", requiring no further development, was still viable

these days, most software is different -- it uses lots of libraries either statically or dynamically, is developed continuously in response to user demand or bugs/security issues that needs fixing, often requires deliberate maintenance to either keep working, or to stay ahead of the competition...

for the people who believe in the earlier concept, the idea of using a third-party service or even some open-weights model to develop a piece of open-source software doesn't strike them as crossing any red line, because the software developed at the end of it is still open-source (and from their point of view, if using proprietary software to develop free software is wrong, then the entire GNU project is an error)

whereas folks with the newer mindset see a piece of software as something that needs constant maintenance and, for them, surrendering part of that maintenance to a service that can shut down at any moment, or one that creates hard-to-maintain code that would motivate continued use of AI models or agents, makes the resulting software not that different from proprietary software it's based on (and, like, sure, it's theoretically possible to take a generated program and improve it by hand, but who would take on all that effort? especially since no human would have an understanding of the code they're working on) -- especially when most AI research is concentrated into the hands of a few big tech companies, usually the kind that people want to move away from when developing open-source software

@dalias question for localization purposes: is it theoretically possible for musl libc to be used on a platform where a byte is not 8 bits long?

part of what makes me uneasy with some anti-genAI folks is that they often go with that "people should make things based on passion and effort" kind of attitude, but without larger systemic changes, this is just going to result in more burnout, even as their arguments about generative AI's effects on society, the environment, etc. are correct

sometimes people here talk about programming like it's some sort of passion for them and that they want to make their software to be the best they can, and i just don't feel that for myself

like, not that i don't like it when software works well, but that there is a reasonable limit to how much effort i can expend in that regard

and you could say "you can just improve, learn new programming languages and techniques", but what's the point? at best, provided this all is recognized by my superiors, i will get paid slightly more, but even then -- i make enough to support me and my family, there are no significant purchases (like a new apartment or car) in the future, any extra money will probably just get spent on frivolous vacations or some other nonsense

and in exchange, i will get saddled with extra demands and more responsibility

can't imagine that someone would really use the number 4 as their private key

(changes private key from 5 to 6)

we have heard your concerns about circles and rounded corners becoming way too prominent in UI design, and are proud to present a new version of our design that we think you will like

#pixelart concept of a loading indicator that actually handles all the major parts of a web query

the part i hate the most about the generative AI discourse is that both sides (yes, both sides) of it are really out of touch with reality

the boosters can't admit that right now, a lot of people, even those who use LLMs personally, still associate its output largely with all the slop that fraudsters have been pumping out and that promises of "but it will eventually deliver a utopian future of super-high efficiency" or threats of "it will turn into skynet" now ring hollow

and the skeptics are treating it as if it were nuclear waste, to the point that multiple different people on here are now dissing linux as irreversably tainted and talking about how BSDs are the future, even though under different circumstances they'd be instead talking about how BSDs are lacking in features and their licensing just surrenders your code to the corporatists and GPL is way better

i hope this whole bubble / hype cycle dies down as soon as possible and we're able to stop fighting and actually figure out what generative AI can actually do on its own, and at what cost, and whether it's worth it

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@ska/117463667069038354

i hate the fact that so many of the people we now call "tech bros" are, in fact, businessmen who just dressed themselves up as tech bros because they know that regular people hate business leaders and (largely, but not completely accurately) hold them accountable for almost every negative change in the world that has happened since the 1980s

i don't believe that the arts have the political power some people claim them to do -- like, the idea that if you let enough artists free and give them the publicity they deserve, enough people will stop being bigots or jerks to each other and a utopia will eventually ensue strikes me as painfully naive and simplistic

(which filmmaker said that most of hollywood spent a whole decade trying to convince people that the vietnam war was bad, and yet no real change came out of it?)

but it definitely seems like right-wingers believe that a lot and see a free and fair cultural landscape as a threat