@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

SnepperStepper

@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social

Social media rebel! Snow Leopard Furry! Transgender! She/her! 1994! Learning to love myself one day at a time! MacGyvering my way through life!

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Dr_Obvious, to actuallyautistic German
@Dr_Obvious@chaos.social avatar

@actuallyautistic
I think I read once that can also show in an aversion of accepting gifts or favors. Do you know any ressource on that?

It came to my mind that I often don't like being invited. Like recently a colleague wanted outof nothing to pay for my coffee. And instead of saying thanks I make it complicated.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@Dr_Obvious @actuallyautistic they're really going to have to start not abbrevating everything. The only "PDA"s i know are "Personal Digital Assistant"s and "Public Displays of Affection". They keep making the same letters stand for different things every couple weeks and i can't keep up. How is this supposed to help anyone's mental health when its stressy as hell to keep up with what the hell they call what i am at any given time??

foone, (edited ) to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

I took some pseudo-selfies with my Sony Mavica FD5 from 1997, which saves jpegs on a floppy disk. Amazingly, this is the high quality mode!

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@foone here's a selfie with mine. I think it kinda looks like one of those press photos when they're at a red carpet premiere (or leading someone out of court i suppose), but not the one that gets published. I like the "dslr" style mavica model better but this was before i was using that one regularly. This was taken in the lowest quality mode because i like that digicam crunch. Still a lot clearer than you'd think. Have you gotten to play with the CD models yet?

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@foone i'd probably say the same about the CD point and shoots but the cd1000 is a great camera, the reload system of physical media with the vibe of contemporary digicams like the cybershot and camedia. Its the best of both worlds imo, and has that big DSLR holdfeel with the good settings to play with. Its also the closest i'm gonna bother getting to DVD camcorders.

SirTapTap, to random
@SirTapTap@mastodon.social avatar

As far as I can tell, the primary non-spam uses for ai are:

-making cover letters that shouldn't exist
-making unnecessary hyper specific article art for random online articles

So if you don't need to do it, ai can do it, apparently. Good stuff

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@SirTapTap since when is false information and "doctors hate him! Use this one weird trick discovered by a construction worker to have more fruitbats eat marshmallows from your hair in 90 days or your money back (not clickbait)" not spam?

kjaymiller, (edited ) to random
@kjaymiller@mastodon.social avatar

Get a 3d printer they said. It’ll be fun they said.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@kjaymiller nacho cheese generator

ajsadauskas, (edited ) to tech
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?

Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.

These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.

Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.

Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.

Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.

(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)

By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.

Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.

And for a time, it worked.

But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.

And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.

My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?

Do we really want to search every single website on the web?

Or just those that aren't filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?

Or just those that don't feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your "free trial" subscription?

At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?

And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?

@degoogle #tech #google #web #internet #LLM #LLMs #enshittification #technology #search #SearchEngines #SEO #SEM

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@ajsadauskas @degoogle i love this idea, i'm going to start my own web directory.

autism101, to actuallyautistic
@autism101@mstdn.social avatar

Let’s talk tags on clothing. I hate them and they annoy me to no end. And even if I cut them off, the tiny bit remaining always manages to touch me and I hate it. 😩

Do tags bother you?

@actuallyautistic

image: unknown

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@autism101 @actuallyautistic they used to but i grew out of it TBH. Well, the kind of tags that are on the clothes i actually wear which were new or already old when i was bothered by tags. In crappy new clothes tags are insane and gross so i get it but i don't wear those. What bugs me even more is how everything modern is horribly skin-tight or stiff and uncomfortable. Seriously, what idiot decided tshirts had to be "fitted" anyways.

Pawpower, to random
@Pawpower@mastodon.social avatar

🧏‍♀️🦮❤️‍🔥Public service announcement: I DON't "overcome" my disabilities or do things "despite" my disabilities. this is ableist language. People with disabilities are still disabled, we do things as disabled people, disability will always be part of what makes us, us. We may "overcome" 'societal barriers or do activities or tasks "despite" limitations systems or other people put on us, but we are STILL and ALWAYS will be disabled. Thank you for coming to my TED TALK!

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@Pawpower honestly i don't see myself as disabled from my neurodivergence because it has become more of a strength to me than just something i have to live with. I feel as though this absolutist dichotomy of disabilities and utilizing such rigid language is in and of itself internalized ablism and therefore not okay. You can feel good about yourself and how you are without the need to compare yourself with those of differing ability and if anything doing that comparison keeps us sad and othered.

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Radio dial with AM, FM, and MFM

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@foone mine also has MFF, MtF, and FAM

nocontexttrek, to StarTrek
@nocontexttrek@mastodon.social avatar

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@nocontexttrek what in the frutiger aero men's shampoo commercial is this from

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@nocontexttrek

glyph, to random
@glyph@mastodon.social avatar

As everyone under 40 in infosec tires of the “Hackers” aesthetic plastered on everything by us tedious elder millennials, one thing that I think gets lost, particularly for younger folks, is that the movie isn’t just goofy camp. I mean, obviously, it’s heavily fictionalized, but there really was a hacking subculture kind of like the one depicted in it in New York in the 1990s. I barely grazed the outer periphery of it myself, and I sometimes wonder if anyone did a serious ethnography of it.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph if the culture was still like that i would have gotten into it. Modern computer culture is just depressing and boring. I'm inclined to still bring floppy disks around with perhaps jpegs of "important information" and trade them for snacks or a hot tip and when you put it in the drive its all sony mavica photos of telephone poles and a .txt that says "ur w3lcum 4 th3s3 1337 h4x0r p1x 0f t3h p0l3z -sn3pprst3ppr"

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@glyph @SnepperStepper i feel like its more about the enblandening as everything hit the phone instead of being its own thing. We really didn't get much that's actually good out of that, i think people just try to believe we did because that's easier than admitting an entire decade or so was a mistake.
But more specifically, i believe vibes are more elastic than most give them credit for and that hacker energy could have easily been rerouted and recontextualized into something positive.

JonBaker, to random
@JonBaker@mastodon.social avatar

THERAPIST: Tiny Legs Michael Jackson isn’t real. He can’t hurt you

TINY LEGS MICHAEL JACKSON:

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@JonBaker i briefly considered digging out Bad and Born in the USA for the extra cursed backwards big legs michael jackson so consider yourself fortunate i have other things to do.

textfiles, to random
@textfiles@digipres.club avatar

A small confession. There's a group of people I've come to hate harder and more consistently than any other group I interact with on the Internet: people who jam into every which way they can, into completely unrelated projects and items, to say "Can you please upload [obscure or not obscure tv show or vhs tape that there is no indication the person has].

I hate these people. When I'm mayor their streets will be plowed last. I will make them wait for 3 hours while letting newcomers come by.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@textfiles i don't mind them that much, i usually get them on sewing with nancy tapes. But like, yeah i snap up every copy i can at the cheapest price because i like them but my tape collection is too broad to pay much for any piece. I tend to use them to make a list of what else is out there. On commercial breaks though its kind of annoying because like idk what i'm gonna get and its not like youtube notifies you when someone replies so i can't even tell them if i do find it.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@textfiles @SnepperStepper wtf no that's definitely not a variety of online brain poison i have encountered.

philpem, to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

I've had the CCTV system fully installed for a week (and partly installed for about a year), and it's had one noticeable effect: the local rogue-traders don't knock on my door any more.
That and I always win the "where did they hide the parcel" game with the local parcel delivery guys :D

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem this is fantastic. There should be more ad campaigns like that, everything is so boring now its time to spice it up!

tubetime, to random
@tubetime@mastodon.social avatar

oh look it is the 74C915 7-Segment to BCD converter. under what circumstances would you use this? i can think of at least two.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@tubetime sometimes that's all you need to make one

roxy, to random
@roxy@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Sometimes I think about going back to a furry instance but I've had enough instance swapping in my life and at this point it's probably impossible to look at all the stuff I've posted on just Mastodon

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@Nine @roxy this is great advice irl too. Make everywhere you go a furry meet, fursuit wherever, bark at people.

NanoRaptor, to random
@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social avatar

Half formed thought; The “OMG it looks so real!” posts on openai videos are the end result of humans that have been fed too much AI output and now have corrupted visual recognition systems. The videos look like the fever dreams I had after I ate that 7 year old jar of mayo in one sitting.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@NanoRaptor i'm not convinced the accounts leaving those comments aren't themselves just dead internet bots feeding what they have computed is an algorithmic trend.

Daojoan, to random
@Daojoan@mastodon.social avatar

I love that “you sound scared” has become a way to shut down critics of AI.

…yes.

yes, I absolutely am scared of it.

No, I’m not ashamed of that.

I don’t hate AI. I don't believe it’s going to destroy us terminator style.

But I’m scared half to hell of the misinformation, political divisions, unemployment, manipulation, spam and deepfake porn and what it’s going to do to our world.

Like it or dislike it, everyone should have a healthy level of fear about what this technology can do.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@Daojoan when a tool oversteps its boundaries, what was once TNT for breaking down rock formations and carving mineshafts becomes nuclear weapons for destorying cities and ending lives. Everything has a use, and when that use is taken to an extreme the results are always bad. How bad? That depends. I hope we see pop ai pull the crypto deathspiral before we find out how deep its rabbit hole goes.

TechConnectify, to random
@TechConnectify@mas.to avatar

Listening to NPR this morning, and apparently there are now influencers who have discovered what generic brands are. The kids are calling private-label products "dupes" and they're excitedly comparing them.

I've never felt so Midwestern and so old.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@TechConnectify the best local milk is also used for my preferred super market's brand milk. That sort of corporate bedfellowism is actually VERY common. Sometimes there's literally no reason to pay more, you just need to do some research to learn who does what.

foone, to random
@foone@digipres.club avatar

Working in tech while trans is often a very weird experience because the associations you have with various organizations are constantly proven to be not be universal.

Like you'll be talking to someone who is implementing a auth system with the company that protected a site with a known death toll, and when you had gently suggested on your Twitter that they stop protecting that site, you got doxxed and death threats.

Or your boss suggests we buy a tool from a site that doxxed a friend.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@foone sometimes i feel like saying after the fact that the old man who died is gay is in and of itself homophobia. Like you couldn't have retroactively made harry a trans man or hermionie bisexual, nah its that old dead guy is supposedly gay. Okay. It could have been innocent, had it not been made clear where that wretched spider stands on all of it.

textfiles, to random
@textfiles@digipres.club avatar

Siri, litigate the 2006 Goatse'ing of Myspace in the year of our lord 2024

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@textfiles lmao shpx tell us you're still butthurt shy of 20 years later about being y2k web shocksite rickrolled without telling us.

orci, to random
@orci@mastodon.social avatar

Cat owners did not need a study to know this.

SnepperStepper,
@SnepperStepper@mastodon.social avatar

@orci yeah but we did want a newspaper with our lil fluffy pals on it to roll up and bap annoying people with. Plus, like come on those cats are famous now. That's worth the captain obvious article.
What else are they gonna report on, tiktok drama? (Oh god please no)

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