gregly

gregly, 9 days ago to random

There are times I wish we could just start over with computers and the internet. Just reset to about 1987 or so, and try again from there. Back then computers sucked, but they sucked in a hopeful, “things are getting better all the time” sort of way — whereas now they suck in a “financialize, monetize, advertise, AI lies, software spies” sort of way.

We have more power than ever, and yet we have less power than ever. And the first warning was when “My Computer” became “This PC” in Windows.

gregly, 11 days ago to random

Me at 25: “I’m gonna run Cat-5 cabling through the attics of my entire house, no problem”

Me at 45: “I’ve installed one ceiling fan and I’m gonna pass out now”

gregly, 15 days ago to stackoverflow

LLMs looting the internet will lead to a significant increase in insularity, barriers to entry, suspicion, and siloing by its users.

Expect to see an increase in invite-only forums and communities which vet everyone who applies for access to make sure they aren’t a scraper in a human suit. An increase in experts refusing to help newbies, for fear of their help being copied, mulched, and resold by massive corporations. A decrease in the “social” part of the net.

#stackoverflow #llm #llmfail

gregly, 27 days ago to random

OH MY GOD THE NEXT CONSOLE GENERATION IS GONNA HAVE A BUNCH OF LLM BULLSHIT IN THEM AREN’T THEY

gregly, 1 month ago to random

Okay, techbros. Look.

I don’t want an AI assistant. I don’t want self-driving cars. I don’t want a Mars colony. I don’t want robots that create art, or help with coding, or deliver food, or determine the most efficient way to maximize destruction when bombing civili—I mean “legitimate military targets”.

I just want a robot that CLEANS MY FUCKING BATHROOM FOR ME

gregly, 1 month ago to random

I got a new router to replace our aging one, which just can’t handle the amount of traffic we sometimes have these days… but god, I do not want to have to port my existing network setup over. 😫

gregly, 1 month ago to random

We’ve come a long way from the old days of BIOS flashing, but my anxiety always shoots through the roof when the system is totally nonresponsive, with no feedback whatsoever, for minutes, as it does whatever the hell it is doing.

gregly, 1 month ago to random

So I’m watching a video about horrible Switch games, and I’ve come to a conclusion:

Gatekeeping is Good Actually™️.

…

Okay, obviously I’m saying something outrageous to catch your attention. Gatekeeping — as in keeping people out of groups/fandoms/etc. — is awful. What I really mean is that minor barriers to entry are good, particularly for markets.

Look at the absolute flood of shit drowning every market, everywhere. You know why it’s all there? Because it is EASY. it is CHEAP and EASY.

gregly, 1 month ago to mentalhealth

Okay. My Mastodon feed is, on the whole, way nicer than my old Twitter feed, but the ratio of horrifying/depressing news to interesting/happy news is still way too high.

I’m looking for suggestions for generally happy/upbeat stuff and people to follow, to try and balance things out a bit. Because I want to stay informed of the lousy stuff happening in the world, but I don’t want to be utterly deluged by it.

#mentalhealth

gregly, 1 month ago to random

I had really hoped to save enough money for retirement before the entire tech industry went down in flames screaming, but [gestures vaguely at everything going on for the past few years]

gregly, 1 month ago to iOS

I use FileBrowser on iOS, and it is an absolutely fabulous file management application. One of the few things it lacks is native playing of MKV files. (It plays MP4 files in-app, but others must be streamed to something like VLC.)

Anyways, if you’re looking for a great file management app that can connect to all sorts of network storage as well as local files, I can’t recommend it enough.

#ios #filebrowser

gregly, 2 months ago to ADHD

ADHD is your phone randomly switching apps every five seconds, and then one of them catches your eye and then you aren’t allowed to change apps again, set the phone down, look away from the phone, or turn the phone off for the next three hours

#adhd

gregly, 2 months ago to random

I haven’t posted much lately, having been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 a lot, so here’s some pics of our cartridge-based retro games. Actually playing these is a hassle requiring digging the respective console, connecting it, etc., but I finally realized that it’s okay to just display them simply because it looks neat.

The top half of our cartridge game collection: from top to bottom, they are Atari 2600, Intellivision, a single ColecoVision cart, and Atari 7800.
The bottom half of our cartridge collection. From top to bottom, they are Sega Master System, a single Sega Genesis cart (the bundled “6-Pak” one), NES, SNES, and N64. Not pictured: the gold Legend of Zelda cartridge, which I think is still downstairs in the NES. I should get it out of there.

gregly, 2 months ago to random

Yeah so we’re in the basement now. #chicagowx #chicagoweather #aurorail #auroraillinois

gregly, 2 months ago to random

There is (probably) a big storm coming this way which may very well include hail.

We just bought a new car a few months ago.

Our garage is filled with crap. There is no way to fit a car in it.

…uh oh.

I put on a loop of the Tetris theme, and got to work, although what I did cannot be in any way described as “cleaning”. Luckily, if there’s one thing my dad taught me to do, it’s move piles of crap from one place to another!

Amazingly, I just barely got it to fit.

The back half of our new car in the garage, surrounded by junk. There is approximately six inches of clearance on each side except the driver’s, which has about two feet.

gregly, 2 months ago to random

Signify will soon require Hue bridges to be signed into an account to use the app to control them.

There is NO reason for this other than data collection. Their excuse of “this is for your own safety” is utterly insulting.

I’ve spent a LOT on Hue devices over the past decade. I won’t spend another dime now.

PLEASE spread this around. Let everyone know Hue is no longer to be trusted, and should not be purchased. #PhilipsHue

gregly, 3 months ago to gamedev

I was thinking recently about how, as shiny as PS5 games are, I find most PS4 and even PS3 games to still look fantastic and totally playable, and I think this is part of the reason for such a huge collapse in AAA game development. Each generational leap in tech has been smaller and smaller, to the point where a lot of folks are saying “why should I buy new games when there are so many great ones in my backlog?”

The consumption treadmill is grinding to a halt.

#gamedev #latestagecapitalism

gregly, 3 months ago to random

You know, what really burns me about the new Prime Video surcharge to remove ads is an absolute ton of people will invariably pay the extra fee (including myself, yes, at least until I can determine if the new Fallout series is decent), and will Amazon come to the conclusion, “Hey, turns out most people fucking hate ads?” No, they’ll come to the conclusion, “Hey, we can keep jacking up the ‘no ads’ fee, sweet!”

gregly, 3 months ago to random

realizes a theme running through early songs by The Police
does the math

Wait… is early output from The Police basically late-Boomer/early-GenX incel-rock? 😬

gregly, 3 months ago to random

Re my boost of Krebs’ tweet: connect to free WiFi, and then immediately connect to a VPN. Period.

gregly, 4 months ago to random

The true purpose of ContentID is to provide passive income for parasitic corporations who know it will take the average person too much time and effort (and possibly money) to dispute their millions of bogus copyright claims.

Everyone involved knows this, which is why they don’t bother to fix its overzealous claiming of stuff that is obviously fair use, or worse, that the claimants don’t own at all.

#morningthoughts #contentid #copyrightmafia

gregly, 4 months ago to random

Drinking Crystal Light, watching MST3K’s classic “Manos: The Hands of Fate”, and wondering why I ever looked forward to becoming an adult. Basically, a typical Wednesday night.

gregly, 4 months ago to random

It’s sad when I look at old episodes of MST3K and think, “Okay, Joel/Mike/Jonah has to watch horrible movies all time… but he has free room and board, food, interesting robots, and job security, so he’s got it quite a bit better than most of us… hmmm, how do I apply to Gizmonic Institute?”

gregly, 4 months ago to random

Today I have survived the third, and largest, round of layoffs at our company in the last 12 months. But a lot of talented folks did not, including over half of the team I’m on.

I’m relieved, but have absolutely massive survivor’s guilt.

Damn it all to hell.

gregly, 4 months ago to random

I figured out recently that, if I just get a few adapters, I can hook up a total of seven monitors to my PC at once (I think)… and I might do it, simply because the idea of doing so is totally insane.