@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

argv_minus_one

@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party

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intransitivelie, to random
@intransitivelie@beige.party avatar

What I wanted from AI: hundreds of robot servants to automate away all my stupid, repetitive tasks, leaving me free to pursue the life of the mind.

What I expected from AI: self-driving cars maybe, at some point.

What I got from AI: a wrong-answer machine which steals money from me and is powered by burning the rainforest.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@intransitivelie

What the owners of “AI” wanted from it: to replace human labor, so they can exterminate everyone while still having robots to grow their food and wipe their bottoms.

Hence why they're all building bunkers.

They're not going to get their wish, at least not this decade, but their omnicidal malevolence nonetheless chills me to the bone. Not even Hitler wanted to eradicate all of humankind.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

turning on heating by logging into ssh from my phone and running a python command because i dont wanna get out from the blanket...

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@whitequark

Does this turn on Emacs spacebar heating, or are you controlling an actual HVAC unit?

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

one time my headmate has ordered a Si5351 programmable clock generator with a little display, for ease of use

it was dead on arrival. no backlight, no display, nothing

undeterred, she found a debug header, downloaded the firmware, reverse-engineered enough to find a printf-type function, wrote a GDB script to hook it, and got display sort-of working that way, enough to see what it attempted to show

and then she filed a dispute with the vendor.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@whitequark

I dearly envy her energy.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

ohhhhhh
I figured out why the Avnera C compiler uses the batshit mov+or pattern for checking if a 16-bit value is zero or not

it's because it does it for any value over 1 byte, in which case you iterate mov+or until done

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@whitequark

But…but this machine has a jnz instruction. W…why…do this? 😳

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@whitequark

I'm reminded of how x86 compilers will xor a register with itself, rather then mov immediate zero into it, for the same reason.

Assembly is indeed cursed.

argv_minus_one, to random
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

I never understood the big seat debate. Do people seriously sit on a toilet without first looking and seeing which position the seat is in?

argv_minus_one, to random
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

Why is it so hard for people to recognize when the horrors in the history books are being repeated?

Why is “it's happening again” always met with “you're exaggerating”?

jake4480, to microsoft
@jake4480@c.im avatar

With the impending doom of ICQ in June and the new crappy version of Teams coming in July, I would like to post this meme one final time

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@jake4480

For what it's worth, XMPP is similarly capable, and only somewhat less efficient (it uses XML instead of a binary protocol).

_ohcoco_, to oregon
@_ohcoco_@mastodon.social avatar
argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@_ohcoco_

Evidently they didn't give these criminals a long enough prison sentence.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@Semi@kbin.social

In a good economy, I would expect there to be ample jobs that pay well above cost of living.

What I see instead is people begging for someone to pay their basic needs, people complaining they've applied to hundreds of jobs and being rejected by all of them, headlines of layoffs, and my family's abysmal financials (that were fine until 2020).

@mozz

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

It cracks me up when people say that people with ADD and ADHD don't actually need their meds, they are just addicted to Adderall. Have they even met a person with ADD or ADHD?
My friends forget to take their meds all the time!

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@mentallyalex

So, basically, NTs make you take these medications so that you'll be more like them, because it makes them more comfortable?

Sigh. Humans are awful. Always wasting the potential of those with unusual abilities or behaviors. Always violently enforcing conformity, to the great detriment of everyone including themselves. All because they don't like being faced with living proof of their own limitations.

@tayfonay @RickiTarr

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

Is TicketMaster the most important monopoly the government could bust up right now.🙄

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@StillIRise1963

No, but it does need breaking up.

atomicpoet, (edited ) to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Today, PC gaming is known as the go-to platform for optimization. If you want the best graphics, best sound, best performance – you get a PC. Obviously, there’s certain things consoles do better, such as couch co-op. But if you want the best possible performance, you get a PC.

But this wasn’t always the case. At one time, PCs drastically lagged behind their console counterparts. While the SNES and Genesis delivered beautiful parallax scrolling and intense synth-laden soundtracks, DOS often looked like it was generations behind.

So back in the early 90s, why did we game on PC anyway? Because the likes of Apogee Software delivered run-and-gun platformers such as Secret Agent.

What made these games so memorable was the price. While Genesis games often cost $70, you could get a shareware game like Secret Agent for $5 and go to town.

Now if the whole appeal was merely the inexpensiveness, we’d probably forget about the likes of Secret Agent. But as it happened, Apogee were world class level designers. From a pure level design standpoint, their games were often better than the garden variety platformer on console.

Back in the early 90s, if I said such a thing on the school playground, I’d be laughed at. But time has validated my opinion. Many people – not just me – keep coming back to Secret Agent and all the Apogee titles because the level design is just so damn good!

It’s amazing to think that, later in the year, that same publisher would drop a game so revolutionary, it changed gaming as we know it forever: Wolfenstein 3-D. I mean, can you believe it? We went from simple platformers to impressive FPS within the space of a year!

But to get to the Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, and Duke Nukem 3-D, we needed these cheap shareware titles like Secret Agent. It blew no one away with the graphics and sound, but it had fundamentally great level design and fun gameplay at the fraction of the cost of a console game.

Why do I keep coming back to Secret Agent? Because there’s something about walking through corridors, collecting keys, and shooting enemies that never gets old.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@atomicpoet

The hardware story was similar. PC hardware was pretty bad for gaming…right up until VGA and the 486 landed, and then it was suddenly game over for the superiority of consoles and the Amiga. That combo could do just about everything the other platforms could, in software, without the limitations of hardware tiles and sprites. This allowed for fun rendering techniques, like Doom's per-column texture mapping and occlusion, that a fixed-function tile-and-sprite machine couldn't do.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@atomicpoet

We saw a similar progression with 3D GPUs. First you had fixed-function machines that could map textures onto polygons. Later, they got blown out of the water by shader-based GPUs that could draw whatever you want, not necessarily just textured polygons.

tomodachi94, to random
@tomodachi94@floss.social avatar

What's the Git GUI of choice for Git newbies nowadays? I'm trying to help out someone who wants to contribute to a GitHub project.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@skyfaller

There are reasons to use a GUI beyond “noobs can't use the command line lol.” For example:

  • The braided-lines visualization is basically impossible without pixel graphics. git log --graph exists, but looks terrible.

  • Clicking a mouse button is a hell of a lot more convenient than copying and pasting commit hashes.

@tomodachi94 @alcinnz

gsuberland, to random
@gsuberland@chaos.social avatar

Microsoft Recall is going to make post-breach impact analysis impossible. Right now IR processes can establish a timeline of data stewardship to identify what information may have been available to an attacker based on the level of access they obtained. It's not trivial work, but IR folks can do it. Once a system with Recall is compromised, all data that has touched that system is potentially compromised too, and the ML indirection makes it near impossible to confidently identify a blast radius.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@gsuberland

It appears that, once again, the primary use case of “ ” is to facilitate crime.

golgaloth, to CrystalsHashtags
@golgaloth@writing.exchange avatar

Someone reminded me it's time to post some alternatives to Adobe software:

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@golgaloth

There are some FOSS PDF tools out there, but they tend to be fairly single-purpose, whereas Acrobat is more of a Swiss Army knife of PDFs.

Consider:

agx, to linuxphones

Whenever I have to deal with on devices that formerly ran android I realize how super simple things like flashing and debugging are on the compared to that.

No odd partition schemes, no super sensitive boot loader that gives up on the first glitch. Just and if all else fails .

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@agx

Now if only we could get a phone like that for a reasonable price…

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@agx

Pine64 is under the thumb of the CCP, and allegedly binds all orders to the laws of Malaysia as well. nope.avi

That's the thing. There are several Linux phones, and pretty much all of them seem to have something seriously alarming or prohibitive about them or their vendor. For Purism, it's price. For Pine64, it's the aforementioned.

NSFVoyager2, to random
@NSFVoyager2@techhub.social avatar

Sister Voyager 1 is transmitting in Science Mode again!

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@NSFVoyager2

's doing science and it's still alive!

QasimRashid, to random
@QasimRashid@mastodon.social avatar

In 2022 SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that public school teachers & other staff can lead students in prayer.

Now Louisiana will require all schools that receive public funding to display the Ten Commandments, including colleges and universities.

If it’s prayer these guys want, if you’re a public school teacher who wants to learn the Islamic call to prayer, i.e. the Adhaan, to teach your students, let me know.🙃
https://www.axios.com/local/new-orleans/2024/05/17/louisiana-10-commandments-classrooms

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@jmax

I love the smell of malicious compliance in the morning.

@QasimRashid

davew, to random
@davew@mastodon.social avatar

Do people understand the impact ChatGPT can have on how we control our software? No more hunting through menus among a thousand options to figure out how to do something. Just use natural human language. The UIs we've had to design and live with will be a thing of the past. Yet no one seems to be talking about this.

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@scottjenson

And if you do describe the actions that the computer is to take, in rigorous, clear, unambiguous terms that cannot possibly be misunderstood, congratulations, you're a programmer using a programming language.

@chrisgervais @davew

argv_minus_one, to random
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

I don't know what mechanism prevents me from biting my tongue, but it clearly isn't reliable enough.

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

ohhhhh, the reason i couldn't find any device-specific code in the binary i was reverse-engineering is because it was all living in encrypted lisp blobs

that makes sense

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@whitequark

A device driver written in Lisp? Interesting choice. What device is this for?

Snowshadow, to news
@Snowshadow@mastodon.social avatar

So all those of you protesters refusing to vote for Biden I hope you realize this is your future with a Trump presidency:👇

" Trump Wants to Deport Pro-Palestine Protesters—and GOP Lawmakers Are Filing Bills to Make It Happen"

@TonyStark
@GottaLaff

#News #Protests #Biden #Trump #Gaza
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/05/trump-protesters-gop-marco-rubio-palestine-college-deport/

argv_minus_one,
@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party avatar

@zdl

That's actually pretty much how I feel about the average voter: willfully thick. Grown, clear-thinking adults should not need this much persuasion to vote correctly. Maybe they do need it, and more power to you if you think you can do it, but I'm appalled that you even need to.

In a sensible world, a career criminal who openly plans to impoverish the entire country wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of securing a majority of the vote for any political office. It'd be unthinkable.

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