nightsky @ nightsky @awful.systems

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7 mo. ago

Is it supposed to be funny or something? Does he actually believe it?

Or: does he even know what it is?

This seems like people writing a paper about swinging crystal pendulums, trying to figure out the important question: are the crystals on our side?

wife’s roommate’s roommate’s roommate

Wow, how did you manage to figure that out?

I will let you know if I figure out any way to bypass Google account creation.

Thanks :) Although I'm so far happy with my current setup.

I got tired of using a KB+M.

Using a mouse on the couch sucks, yeah. I still had an old unused Apple Magic Trackpad here, which (to my surprise) works perfectly with Linux, and with that it's pretty nice.

I couldn’t bypass the Google account creation/login

That's why I try really hard to avoid such things. I still try to (so far successfully) avoid having any Google-created operating systems anywhere in my home, because I trust them even less than Apple (for some years I used an AppleTV, but grew too frustrated with its limitations, and also Apple is becoming less and less trustworthy as well).

My solution currently: connected to an (older, non-smart) UST projector is a small HTPC (a little box from Asus based on an Intel N200, low power and fanless, but still has a GPU with a modern video decoding engine so it can decode even 4K video without issues). Since it's a normal x86 system, I run a normal desktop Linux on it. To access streaming services, youtube, etc. I just use the web interfaces in Firefox. Big advantage of the setup is privacy, and best-in-class applications for playing local files (on streaming appliances that's usually annoying and bad). And I can even watch broadcast TV on it with a USB DVB-T2 thingy, although I do that rarely these days.

Disadvantage: need to have desktopy computery input devices on the couch to use it (also have an IR receiver in there, but it's not working well). Still, for me the upsides outweigh that downside.

Ugh. With this, and the recent articles about car makers collecting location data, and the multitude of news about car makers integrating LLMs, it seems that cars are going the same way as TVs, i.e. everything on the market is constantly violating privacy while also throwing ads in your face, and there's no good models left to buy that don't do it (to my knowledge). Wondering if there will be any good options left when it's some day time for a new car...

Shows up like that in the local (non-US) version here too.

And this would have been such an easy way for Google to show a little bit of (at least symbolic) resistance to everything going on...

Maybe your monitor was trying to protect you

Yep, I'm certainly not claiming that Windows is better at it these days... (Possibly unpopular opinion: Windows usability peaked with WinXP.)

Thanks! I uninstalled it and things appear to work normally.

There are days where I think that desktop Linux usability has gotten so good, it has come such a long way since I started using it in the late 90s, and that now it's really good. And then there are days like today, where I just install some system updates, reboot, and suddenly I'm greeted with:

Note: I have absolutely no idea what "Fcitx" even is. Or why and how it's launched, or whether I'm actually using it or not. Or what this notification is trying to tell me exactly, and whether it is desirable for me to "improve the experience" with it. Or how the latest updates caused this. It appears that it has something to do with keyboard input, I guess. I assume that I could find out more by crawling the web. But honestly, I'm just too fucking exhausted to even bother figuring it out. I don't even want to know how much lifetime I've already spent chasing Linux problems like that.

I like to use -- in plain text too! LaTeX user high five...?

Although I read somewhere recently that some people consider usage of em-dashes as a sign of AI-generated text. Oh well.

Don’t worry they will use ChatGPT to learn all the COBOL they need.

Oh why would they. They will just rewrite it from scratch in a weekend, right? And reading the original code would only pollute the mind with historic knowledge, and that stands in the way of disruptive innovation.

(btw I appreciate your correctly nested parentheses.)

So after billions of investment, and gigawatt-hours of energy, it's now "not too bad for throwaway weekend projects". Wow, great. Let's fire all the programmers already!

Apart from whatever the fuck that process is, it is not engineering.

And to think that people hated on Visual Basic once... in comparison to this stuff, it was the most solid of solid foundations.

Not clicking those HN links, decided years ago already that site should not be part of my life anymore at all. The few times I have deviated from that rule since, I regretted it.

As for the more general topic, I feel so bad for all trans people with everything that is unfolding. It's horrible. But be assured that there are many peope in this world who are on your side on this. Wish I could say something more useful, but I'm at a loss of words.

Okay thanks for the heads-up, I will give it a try. The "Note to the reader" it starts with is already pretty wild... (unless that's just part of the fiction. Edit: I assume it's part of the fiction)

Edit: okay... a few pages in, I don't think I can do this... not my thing.

You have my sympathy! Is the worst part that you have to review the slop or its general presence at all?

Asking because at my workplace it will be allowed soon, and some coworkers are unfortunately looking forward to it, and I'm horrified, especially by the thought of having to do code review then...

That is indeed troubling, casts a shadow on Project Gutenberg's judgement. Now I wonder how long until Wikipedia falls too :( Gosh, I miss being excited about new tech. Now new tech is just making things worse.

About that book, so it is more "good bad" instead of "bad bad"? Maybe I'll take a look, some light/weird reading might be better than doomscrolling (and these days there's so much doom to scroll).

I have to keep reminding myself that this is the technology that they all claim will soon do all our work, our arts, our science, everything.

Rituals can be good, but yeah, agile standup meetings are not the good kind. Luckily I don't have them daily... several times a week is already draining enough. If they were daily, I would just burn out. And the standups are IMO not even the worst part of agile...