kadu

I have a visceral “AI” sensor that triggers when I see these:

“Rust Implementation (v2)”

“Performance Benchmarks (Validated)”

Human beings don’t self-validate explicitly like that. AI loves doing it.

You generate code, there’s a bug, you ask for a fix, your AI of choice will always output with:

*** Fix build issue ***

*** End fix ***

and then call it “Version 2 (Validated)”.

Sometimes it’s more subtle, but you can feel it, it loves adding “confirmed”, “working”, “validated”.

I was never excited for FPGAs, they were lauded as the biggest innovation in emulation and they’re just… meh.

Now decompilation? I’m finally excited again, amazing work so far

Sure, but that’s a lot of work and worry to keep all those backups going and syncd

I think it took me 15 minutes to first install SyncThing and Vorta? I literally haven’t worried about this for the last two years

Now, you’re probably an IT admin or programmer

I’m a biologist :) (though to be fair, mastering in bioinformatics, but this setup came first!)

And in the end, you have a computer hooked to your stereo, the one place I’m trying to escape the constant computing.

My stereo is a Gradiente from the 70s, no computers there. My portable player does connect to a computer to sync sometimes… but I do this when charging, so out of mind.

But… those other storage mediums can also get damaged, burn, rot, etc

Sure can. You know what else they can do? Instantly and cleanly copy their data to any other storage device, they can even do so automatically every day!

Your hard drive can be erased in many ways.

I’m willing to bet my main SSD, my backup HDD, my FLAC player’s SD card, and my laptop SSD all carrying the same file are going to be more durable than a piece of plastic.

I’m curious as to why?

Physical media scratches, rots, burns down, etc. They also require a lot of space, and you can’t have it all with you easily.

My FLAC library is got the same or better audio quality, I can backup and copy in seconds for myself or friends, I can carry everything, or just curated playlists, with the toggle of a button, and I can preserve them on any medium I find - mechanical HDs, SD cards, SSDs, etc.

Though I am very curious about vinyl…

I prefer dedicated digital players over physical media, for instance, a FLAC player with a digital library over CDs, but I’m glad to see this trend catching up. Anything that gets people building their own collections, escaping algorithms and escaping DRM/streaming is a huge win in my book.

It’s all part of the plan, create technological dependency. Why is Google so laser focused on making sure these school PCs are always Chromebooks?

Raise an entire generation that can’t write, research, calculate, synthesize, without a Chromebook. If it breaks, they buy a new one, when they grow up they rely on always having one, and so on.

I’d worry I’ve made a silly mistake which would make me look a fool and waste their time.

AI bros have zero self awareness and shame, which is why I continue to encourage that the best tool for fighting against it is making it socially shameful.

Somebody comes along saying “Oh look at the image is just genera…” and you cut them with “looks like absolute garbage right? Yeah, I know, AI always sucks, imagine seriously enjoying that hahah, so anyway, what were you saying?”

The issue is that comment sections are disabled and video descriptions claim to be empty

So it makes the page even better?

Any special features you’re looking for? Fossify messages works fine for me, and it supports both SMS and MMS. In fact, the entire Fossify suite of apps works really well in general.

AI writing tools — improve, summarize, translate, and more (Anthropic / OpenAI)

why though

Reminder that Google is on it’s third attempt to prevent or limit the installation of APKs outside of the Play Store, meaning they are near the point they can effectively control what apps people run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN-oYyd9fWg

Now somebody needs to post about this on Reddit, so The Verge can make an AI generated piece based on the post!

I’m a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib

DO NOT TOUCH my precious matplotlib, I’ll HUNT DOWN any AI slop shithead damaging MY BABY

wait you have to verify your grades…from high school!?

Yep. More than once.

There’s an opening for a position you’re interested in, so you fill one of these long “everything is in your CV, but you need to retype on our formulary again” registrations.

A week later, they contact you via email. A very enthusiastic person, signing by their own name and no automated HR shenanigans claims to have enjoyed what they saw and you’re through to the next step. There’s some corporate “we are an amazing workplace for excepcional people” fluff, but nothing terrible, so let’s proceed.

You now have a week to type and send a document that is got nothing to do with the position or your technical skills. You need to type a biography, you need to describe how you were in high school, were you social? You need to show proof of your high school grades, then college, you need to give a biographical memoir of your life. But sure, it’s Canonical right, great for your career so you proceed.

So then a technical interview comes up. You have a time limit to fill it out, but the questions won’t be actually deep enough to test your skills - they would just veto somebody with zero idea of what’s going on, so it becomes tedious. A child with an AI Chatbot can probably score enough.

So then you move on to an IQ test, with baffling things such as tests of reaction time (if I ever needed fast reaction times in my field of study, ring the bell because a zombie apocalypse just ruptured our office building).

You’re tired of the bs, but they email you three times in a row telling you about the deadlines for completion. Now somebody wants to speak with you, and guess what, they haven’t checked your CV, or your biography, or your results from the tests, so get used to explaining everything again.

You’ll have quite a few meetings like this, always moving up to the “higher ups” that are equally unaware of who you are, until you reach a VP. And then they put you on hold… so hope things work out, because they actually can leave you in hold forever, answer that the position is actually no longer available, or finally hire you. They have KPIs that incentivize having “candidates being evaluated” which means keeping you on limbo at the end of the process is a great result on their dashboards. Oh, and don’t trust the “oh we loved you, you’re in, let’s sign next week” because the probability of not signing is still high.

After experiencing Canonical’s recruitment process, which they claim to be extremely proud of, I can only imagine that if the other departments operate with a similar mindset the entire company is a non-sensical hell.

I’m really loving the game… do I want to risk and look at the list… Sigh, I’ll look at the list