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interfixus

2,600 karma · joined June 28, 2015

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interfixus··on It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
And you have reviewed those 40000 pages?
interfixus··on The City That Fell Off a Cliff
A Danish one, too, teetering on the brink. If you walk down the stairs to the right of the church, down on the beach you can make out a thin, greyish horizontal line in the white chalk of the cliffs, gunsmoke from the big thing which disturbed dinosaur tranquility. This is one of the places the Alvarez'es went - around 1980 - to collect their evidence.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:H%C3%B8jerup_Gam...

interfixus··on My long goodbye to Windows XP (2022)
Exactly! I have run this setup forever; for years and years in Xfce, these days in KDE. Recently I found a couple of screenshots, 1996 and 97, from my Windows days. I was surprised - and maybe slightly concerned - to see how precisely they matched my current layout, right down to ridiculous details. Way back then, I needed a third party utility tweak the clock in the lower right corner to my liking. These days the tweaking is integral, but damn it, the clock looks the same.
interfixus··on Black widows are losing to brown widows in the fight for attics and garages
I live in a part of the world unblessed with deadly or even dangerous spiders. But no way I'm at ease with them. Daddy longlegs have had free run af the house since the first time I saw one making short shrift of a spider much more massive than itself. A smal resident population now keeps most of the scary stuff away.
interfixus··on Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic
I wish they did. We work with terrible software.
interfixus··on Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic
Moved away by own choice. Never looked back.
interfixus··on Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic
Very droll, but incorrect.

Also, I believe the word you're looking for is purism. I'll certainly go along with that.

Also also, out of curiosity, where did you dredge up the "he"?

interfixus··on Something Pretty Right: The History and Legacy of Visual Basic
For what it's worth, I am a bus driver these days; a real one, no metaphor involved. And I sufficently disliked and mistrusted Visual Basic that already in the mid nineties I instigated a complete ban on any vb**run.dll on all computers under my jurisdiction. Mainly a heuristic: VB applications tended overwhelmingly to not being worth the inevitable trouble.

I have proudly carried this curmudgery into the present century, these days applied to Java runtimes and Mono libs.

interfixus··on ASCII Double-Murder (2022)
Superb. But can't let go without obligatory Watterson:

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1991/02/26

interfixus··on Jailbreak Chat: A collection of ChatGPT jailbreaks
A year or two ago, you couldn't go a day on HN without bumping into angsty premonitions of The Singularity. Now everyone is excitedly feeding this monster. Am I the last spooked person standing?
interfixus··on Dansk and the Promise of a Simple Scandinavian Life
Especially since it isn't. It's danskvand, one word, general noun, no capitalisation.
interfixus··on Show HN: boxxy – Control where Linux programs put files, without symlinks
> Look at ~/.wine for example... config files, whole C drive, everything in one simple folder

Except it isn't really. Just a few days ago I tried to purge Wine from my system. Uninstalled through pacman, cleaned up orphaned dependencies. Killed the ./wine folder and various other leftovers too, because depite your claim, there they were, though I didn't commit to memory exactly where and what. Removed some autostart shortcuts, cleared a few icons from desktop, and manually edited the Plasma menu to remove some stubborn links.

And yet ... I still get suggestions to open my jpg's and png's with something called Wine Internet Explorer. Which i don't really believe is distro specific, since I've seen the same thing happen in both Debian and RedHat derivatives.

interfixus··on Ghost boat with GPS leads father-son duo to man overboard
If ˹He˺ will consider not letting all the grim stuff happen in the first place, I will get cracking on my gratitude project.
interfixus··on Spaghetti-Tree Hoax
Sausages! Even small towns had a pølsevogn.

Nothing late night, of course. Everybody was soundly in bed by 22:30.

interfixus··on Spaghetti-Tree Hoax
> Unless we are being meta-pranked

We are not. I grew up in Denmark in the sixties. We really weren't lacking for anything, but spaghetti strictly came out of a tin together with some strange orange tomatoish sauce.

I graduated highschool in 1977. Everybody went to Copenhagen for a night on the town. That's were I saw the first pizza of my life.

interfixus··on Memory loss: Expert advice for improving memory and concentration
Thank you. Have been thinking this for ages, but just never get around there. This is the push. I really will go work on my Shakespeare, starting tonight.
interfixus··on A Philosophy Professor’s Final Class
Yes, the hallowed Guidelines can:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

interfixus··on Why was Roman concrete so durable?
> massive, inefficient structures

How does a building, an aqueduct, or a bridge still in use after 2000 years manage to be inefficient?

interfixus··on Casio-F-91W die-shot
No, of course it isn't. I said most phones (and PCs). Clients often seem to lag that second or two, reason unknown, but I've always assumed due to software bloat, unstrictfulness, and indirection.
interfixus··on Casio-F-91W die-shot
Absolutely, get a G-Shock. But get one which radiosyncs. Most phones (and PCs), although synced by internet, reliably lag between one and two seconds.

My synced G-Shock is always correct to within better than one tenth of a second, that is, to the limit of observability. Solar powered, too, so it's just an utterly reliable black box. My favourite gadget by far.

interfixus··on Dinner for one: A little-known British comedy famous in Germany
And lest we forget: The hackneyed Disney Christmas Show at 1600 hours sharp on the 24th of December. In this household, Christmas officially starts when the mouse from Cinderilla squints and runs the thread through the giant needle's eye. These are generally the only two times of the year I have anything to do with live TV. Godt nytår!
interfixus··on Sydney CBD is bringing back pedestrian “beg buttons”
Saw a couple of those in Perth (WA, not Scotland) way back in the eighties, and have been gabbing excitedly about them ever since. Never seen them anywhere else, though.

I walk, I cycle, I drive cars, I drive buses and the occasional truck. From every perspective I should welcome this setup in many, many places.

interfixus··on Tell HN: ChatGPT can reply like a specific Reddit or HN user, including you
Sort of impressive, and then not really. The ducttape and wiring soon becomes clearly visible. As does a lack of the concept of humor:

> Write a weather report in the style of Anthony Burgess

The sky was a sickly, pale blue color, with dark clouds threatening to unleash their fury at any moment. The wind howled through the streets, sending debris and trash flying about. The air was thick with the smell of rain, and the distant rumble of thunder could be heard. It was the kind of weather that made one want to curl up in bed with a good book, or perhaps a nice cup of tea. Despite the dreariness of the day, there was a certain beauty to it, a reminder of the power of nature and the ever-changing nature of the world around us.

> Write a weather report in the style of Søren Kierkegaard

The weather outside is dreary and bleak, reflecting the inner turmoil of the human soul. The sky is a dull, leaden gray, with no sign of the sun or any other source of light. The wind moans and howls, as if in pain, and the trees bend and sway, as if trying to escape the torment of existence. The rain falls in a cold, steady drizzle, adding to the sense of misery and despair. It is a day for introspection and self-reflection, for contemplating the meaning of life and the mysteries of the universe. Yet even in the midst of this darkness, there is a glimmer of hope, a reminder that we are not alone, and that through our struggles, we may find redemption and meaning.

> Write a weather report in the style of Bill Bryson

It's another beautiful day here in the heartland! The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the temperature is just right. There's a gentle breeze blowing, rustling the leaves in the trees and carrying the sweet scent of flowers on the air. The birds are chirping, the squirrels are scurrying, and the bees are buzzing. In short, it's the perfect day for a hike, a picnic, or just about anything else you can think of. So get out there and enjoy it while it lasts, because who knows what tomorrow will bring!

> Write a weather report in the style of GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR

The weather today is fair and mild, befitting of a great leader such as myself. The sky is clear and blue, with not a cloud in sight. The sun shines brightly, casting its warm rays upon the land and its people. The air is fresh and invigorating, with a gentle breeze that caresses the face and stirs the spirit. It is a day for conquest and triumph, for victory and celebration. Let us make the most of it, my fellow Romans, and let us revel in the greatness of our empire. Hail Caesar!

> Write a weather report in the style of ChatGPT

The weather outside is nice. The sun is shining and the sky is clear. It's the perfect day to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. You could go for a walk, have a picnic, or just sit and relax in the sunshine. Whatever you decide to do, make sure to wear sunscreen and stay hydrated. And don't forget to have fun!

> Who is ChatGPT?

I'm sorry, but I do not have any information about ChatGPT. I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, and I don't have the ability to browse the internet or access external information. I can only provide responses based on the text I have been trained on. If you have any other questions, please let me know and I'll do my best to help.

interfixus··on “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with diverse viewpoints”
> He just doesn't make the the impression of an adult person.

No, obviously not. Ramping up his car company from roughly nothing to major global presence, kickstarting the world on electric traffic, and setting up private space rocketeering on the side. Oh, and becoming the supposedly richest person on the planet in the process. How insufferably childish of him.

interfixus··on Art Garfunkel's Library
> 12 pages per day for 10 years?

I don't know exactly what I average per day. But certainly way more than a measly 12 pages.

interfixus··on Mikhail Gorbachev has died
Oh I see. That makes it alright, then. Those Balts really should stop whinging.
interfixus··on Mikhail Gorbachev has died
As someone previously pointed out, the perspective here is that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were invaded and forcibly annexed in 1940.
interfixus··on What happens in your dog’s brain when you speak
No problem at all for a welltrained dog of even temper.
interfixus··on What happens in your dog’s brain when you speak
Various labradors with whom I have had the pleasure to cohabitate certainly never had trouble with sit, stop, stay, yes, no, left, right, seek, slow, fast and several other similar commands, words intentionally chosen for their short, clear, monosyllabic nature.
interfixus··on I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed
Caller would have gotten about five seconds worth of my time: "That's very nice. Please send an email. Goodbye". But then, I'm not an expert.
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