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pcblues

372 karma · joined July 11, 2016

https://pcblues.com

markosborne@pcblues.com

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pcblues··on Ghostty 1.4
I have an interesting reason to not upgrade:

I use ghostty as my go-to terminal on my linux devices. I chose it after trying four or so with the way I work. It just works perfectly for me.

But I only really have one use case: 1) Work the way I want it to

I could list my wants as an example, but there is no point because I don't know whether my needs are being met by what they consider a mistake in their design or a feature they provide.

So you can understand my conundrum - am I relying on features and design they consider is broken? If so, my current set up will "break" for me, even if it is a measurable improvement for most other people. I don't know.

I have no reason to "fix" the "working" release for me.

This is meaningful when forced upgrades occur, because the cost of training is never borne by the software provider (looking at you, big 4 or 8 or however many there is now.)

pcblues··on Git for the US Code
I hadn't thought of using git to track the changes in legislation. This is a cool idea.

In Australia, I spent a bit of time trying to work out how to find which politician voted for what (both at state and federal level), so that when elections come, you can single out the individuals who voted for what legislation. I think AI may make this easier, but the challenge is in not spamming the "free and open" access to the online record of our legislation.

So far, it's probably a one-person $50K per year job to do this task manually, and the language of the public legislation record didn't lend itself easily to determining the laws or rights that actually changed when bills were passed into legislation. They are explicitly stated, but hard to distill with regexes, filters or other analysis tools (e.g. "Who voted to stop electric scooters going over 25km/h?") If you try reading the legislation, you will know what I mean.

"A complete and open record of the proceedings of our parliament" still needs people spend a good chunk of time interpreting and summarising it (e.g. the media, commentators, etc) which means it's a time-consuming hobby or a paid gig.

pcblues··on Nietzschian Debugger
That gave me a chuckle.

He really nailed a godless post-modernism decades before it flourished. Even mentioning the names of the modern protagonists will get me down-voted :)

pcblues··on Nietzschian Debugger
What you are saying is true to a degree and debugging was 90% of the work in my career. Finding the smoking gun IS the key as you said.

It depends on where the developer is at in their journey too.

For some, "look in the logs" is a challenge just to find out what they are and where to find them and what they are saying. A great piece of advice for a person in this position.

For others, "There are files that hide in the caves of your computer's consciousness. Find what causes the shadows on the walls." is a valid call to dig deeper :)

pcblues··on Nietzschian Debugger
That's called a career choice :)
pcblues··on Nietzschian Debugger
This is a fun idea with a good premise.

And you must have known you were going to be critiqued here on your choice of philosopher :)

If my AI tells me I must overcome myself, reconcile with myself, find truths, and laugh, and do each of these things ten times each day - and tracks it for me so I know when I can stop developing and will sleep well... then we are talking Nietzsche! - Thus Sprach Zarathustra, The Academic Chairs of Virtue (II)

pcblues··on What even is an OS now?
The idea of software provided by domain experts has to continue even if you can write software to do what you want by chatting to AI.

"Write an app to provide psychological advice to people with mild anxiety, then market it and sell it to people with mild anxiety."

If an entrepreneur did that with no domain expertise, imagine the potential liability.

How do you know the output is correct for anything that matters more than completing simple and repetitive tasks? You still have to know an expert in a domain has vetted the software. The result of applying AI to OS development is making itself fairly clear with MS I believe.

pcblues··on Plan mode is dead
I found the article interesting in that the author didn't baulk at receiving an unchecked uncheck-able bulk of code. If this is what is supposed to ship, am I just old-fashioned to think this should not be acceptable? There is no way I would ship code that a person had not read, let alone written.

A quick straw poll. Are most people here who use AI to code well-versed in their languages/software development? i.e. 10+ years experience doing it "by hand"? I think in ten years time there will be no developers with that 10 years experience behind them.

pcblues··on It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell
Don't use web security cameras to stop crime. Every service wants your personal information. Every service charges a subscription. The crime will still happen.

Use a physically protected motion action video recorder. No web. The burglary will happen and you will have evidence. No software upgrades. Never obsolete.

YMMV

pcblues··on “I just chose words carefully”
It's the holy grail for text adventures :)

Funny article, and there is probably a similar post in an ILoveKerning site.

pcblues··on Transfer files over an Ethernet patch cable
Yup.

"Computer to computer should not be seen without a device in between (unless playing ROTT with your housemates)"

35 years ago maybe :) I had serial and parallel socket, and routerless networking happening on my home systems :)

Use cases? Emergencies and maybe dedicated backup.

pcblues··on Doctors are finally learning to manage antidepressant withdrawal
Exposure therapy does not work for everyone in all areas. Sometimes not at all.

Also, see the debate around discussing traumatic events in therapy immediately versus waiting a year.

Throwing people in the deep end doesn't always result in a swimmer :)

YMMV of course.

pcblues··on Doctors are finally learning to manage antidepressant withdrawal
Zoloft for me (Sertraline) years ago. Was on for a few years and came off cold-turkey when it didn't seem to help any more.

My life outside my head was crazy enough. My mind then matched it. I don't regret taking it, but it is a real trap of taking sanity from your own future and paying it back later. Advice I received was if my body could handle it, I should stay on it forever. I didn't like that idea, though. Among the negative side effects, the chemical sexual drive suppression caused its own problems. YMMV of course.

pcblues··on CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO
A CE0 is only as good as their investors.
pcblues··on A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy
That's mixing human memory with root access. Worse than AI :) I have lost more to mistakes than bugs over 30 years.
pcblues··on A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy
Seems to be the flavour of the day :)
pcblues··on A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy
I appreciate the true snark of this :)
pcblues··on A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy
I guess you could map it to the right-hand M key?
pcblues··on LinkedIn CringeBot 3000
I don't add people to my network to reduce the noise. I don't pay but get "requests" for software development that are not personally directed, so I delete those. Any job advertisement I am notified about is closed by the time I click on it, within seconds of the email. Any misspelt ad is a phishing crime in the making.

Maybe I should give them money :)

pcblues··on LinkedIn CringeBot 3000
I wish I could reply to the "I pooped" linkedin output. "Tongue firmly in cheek" is horrifying.
pcblues··on OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining
Surprisingly it does. It allows private property and the ability to progress with effort and mutual respect. Got a better alternative?
pcblues··on Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's
Since we are commenting in a tech website about chocolate bars, I'll say this. I bought one or more every day for years during my childhood from about 7 years old to 12 years old. Must have walked and rode my bike enough to stay fit. I also filled my lent box when I gave them up (Church donation, put the money you would spend on your daily fun into a box instead of spending it)
pcblues··on Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, Native X64 Port
Check in the github src directory.
pcblues··on Should you stop cracking your knuckles?
Any muscle, back and joint pain should first be met with mild strengthening, mild weight loss and mild exercise. It's like turning your computer off and on. Mostly the problems go away. Then check for other things :) Keep remembering to relax and move, from your fingers to your wrists and shoulders. And keep trying different set-ups and equipment if you can. There is a pretty magic set-up for most people. 30+ years myself into being on a computer nearly all the time personally and professionally. Back is starting to hurt again. Time to take my own advice again :)
pcblues··on Scorched Earth 2000 – Web
No way! I played the original (too much) while doing computer science at uni in the early 1990s. My friends were either playing the Dune RTS or mmorpgs, depending on their leaning. A lot of the limited available computing power went into playtime in those days :)
pcblues··on Deterministic Fully-Static Whole-Binary Translation Without Heuristics
Sounds like they tweaked an AI to get a minimal subset of accurate outcomes and started waving their hands for anything more complicated, realistic and ultimately generally useful. The larger problem-space is still an NP-complete problem. I guess if the data-centres become infinitely large, this problem can be worked around.

/s /jk

pcblues··on StarFighter 16-Inch
Sensible thought. I very much hope there is a glut of one-three year old ram and GPUs on the market in about one year when the AI market "cools" and the ear-marked components return to the market.

The banks that lent the AI industry the money are already trying to sell their debt.

pcblues··on Men who stare at walls
Marked me down? That was a joke about how quotes are misattributed on the internet. (I am the following person) But if you are good at your job because you see faults before humour and it happens as a personal trait, then good on you. Found another fault.
pcblues··on Is my blue your blue?
Used to be red/orange in mine.
pcblues··on Is my blue your blue? (2024)
I had a colour-blindness test when I worked at an abattoir.

My job was to find odd things on a one third section of a side of beef as it went past and cut it off. 1500 or so per day.

The test showed numbers created with blobs of close colours.

The last test didn't have a number in it.

Cheeky buggers.

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