Photuris

I overlocked my Pentium 133 to 150.

I was such a badass.

Good.

What happened to IRC? It worked great.

No, but it constraining the labor market. AI is a hammer that employers are enthusiastically wielding to “discipline” labor, and to put developers “in their place” and accustomed to asking for and accepting less.

AI (and the threat of AI) is being used to end the days of developers enjoying high pay and strong market leverage. Investors and c-levels don’t care about the craft of software, they care about profit. Labor costs are an impediment to more profit.

If one senior level developer can be replaced with AI plus two or three entry level devs in India cranking out shit that barely works but still sells, at half the cost, then you know what will happen.

They do not care about you, your job, or your craft. You are seen as a tool in their designs, and you have had too much power for too long. They want to dispense with as many expensive, opinionated knowledge workers as quickly as possible. Even AI that half works is better than a competent but uppity expensive employee, from their POV.

And we don’t even use them effectively to protect our rights.

I have fond memories of self-hosting a qmail setup for a long time, then eventually migrating to a postfix configuration, back in the day.

Keeping up with spam filtering finally did me in.

In this particular use case, no. The LLM not only transcribes, but it summarizes, drafts, and categorizes as well (ICD-10 codes, cross-referencing medical history, etc.).

Very useful for overworked and under-resourced healthcare workers.

Look, AI bolt-ons to existing software and processes often do suck. But this specific instance is a real positive use-case.

Every technology has a place where it’s useful - with LLMs, it’s just mostly been “let’s throw it at everything.” In most cases, it’ll fall away as useless, and a few cases, it’ll stick where it really adds value.

AI is a mixed bag, and a whole lot of hype.

But voice-to-text auto-generation of patient notes during dr visits will be a huge win for the medical profession. Data entry by doctors and nurses will be cut down 10x (just review what the software transcribed, make edits, and sign off).

Ok.

But, in Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, all three of which I work in regularly, I open up a terminal and type stuff in it, open up applications in windows and work in them, and copy and paste between them.

Really, any DE can handle this stuff. Not sure what all the fuss is about otherwise. But it’s all good.

It’s wild to me how GNOME evokes such strong opinions in folks. It really is a love it or hate it kind of deal (I’m in the “love it” camp).

I wonder why that is. I like KDE ok, but it doesn’t elicit a strong emotion from me. KDE works fine, I just really like GNOME.

There must be something about GNOME in particular that some people love, and others hate.

Good.

I got banned for saying we should punch Nazis, and calling Musk a cunt.

I regret nothing.

Black comedy/gallows humor is a thing.

You don’t need to be so uptight. Nobody’s actually advocating for the murder of children here.

Ugh, this sucks.

I hope Europe steps up in a big way.

Ugh, iRobot too. So now I’ve got to replace my Ring doorbell and get rid of my expensive robot vacuum and mop. Damnit.

Oh well, I can vacuum and mop by hand.

Fortunately, our Alexa devices are gone, Audible has been cancelled, our Kindles have been replaced, Amazon Prime, Amazon Kids, and Amazon Prime Video subscriptions are cancelled, and I just got my old photos copied down from Amazon Photos yesterday. So, I think I’m good to delete my Amazon account altogether.

I didn’t see thriftbooks on the list, so that’s a relief.

Do y’all know how Fastmail measures up in regards to privacy?

I’m happy with the service, but I don’t know how it compares in this particular domain, compared to the likes of Proton, Tuta, et al.

The Nuke Reddit History Chrome extension is great for this.