Things have changed significantly since Super Mario Bros. was released. For example, vast majority of video games released these days feature no senseless violence toward turtles. Many even portray turtles in factual, chilly way! 🐢

I mean, it’s very plausible. This was referring to Mona Khalil Orange House bombing. This absolutely could have been an AI fuck-up. “This guy is hanging out at the beach. Much like terrorists do sometimes. Okay, bombs away”

I had to let out a depressed chuckle when someone referred to Pangram as “industry standard”. …just because that particular service had been the centre of the Shy Girl controversy and they had dragged themselves to the limelight again when another novel got accused of AI use.

The Shy Girl controversy is a doozy. People raised their eyebrows and thought the novel was written with AI. Pangram CEO elbowed his way to the limelight and proved, using his fine AI product, that this novel is [insert some absurdly specific high percentage] AI. The author was like “Well I handed my novel to someone else, and they used AI to copyedit the book!” The publisher was like “So you used someone else afterall, after declaring you were the sole author? Consider the publishing agreement revoked.” People were like “Due to AI use, right? 😀 Due to AI use, right? 😕” The publisher was like “…No, we have a few AI projects cooking.”

This is absolutely the biggest source of anxiety I have right now as someone who has been writing a really heartfelt novel for over a decade. (Things got delayed due to… personal stuff. Also I started drinking beer like a proper author. It didn’t help, actually.)

Back when I started this, I had been publishing some short stories under CC licences. I guess that has to be an option once again (and as much as I hate it as an open source nerd, -NC might make an appearance.)

To adapt a phrase: “If no one is wearing a regulation uniform, then everyone is.”

Yeah, for most things, GIMP user interface is absolutely fine.

Most of my mild grumbles about GIMP are not really usability problems, rather just features that would be nice to have. (We got better layer groups now, yesss. Non-destructive plugins are finally within the viewing distance. Yay.) There is stuff that GIMP doesn’t do but competing open source apps do, and while there’s interoperability, it could always be better. (I hear GIMP is finally going to come up with a replacement for xcf files, hope they cooperate with Krita devs and blow the dust off the OpenRaster project.)

The only really aggravating GIMP usability thing is that exporting is very janky (would rather have one single unified export dialog with all the settings), but I assume that’s just a thing because of the way GIMP file plugins have worked in the past.

In the DVD I have, there’s this hilarious behind the scenes clip where the T-Rex animatronic starts twitching and jerking when exposed to the artificial rain, Steven Spielberg watches stuff unfold with his jaw on the ground, and the folks try to dry the animatronic up with towels (as seen here).

Can’t get this shit on streaming services, tell ya what!

Reminds me of some interview of Linus, where they showed another photo of his workspace. Linus said the first thing people usually notice is the standing desk (he was a bit of a trendsetter). The second thing they notice is the wall colour. They use the paint in mental hospitals. It has a calming effect on the human mind. (Goodness knows Linus needs all the chill he can get.)

Costco runs it’s own rigorous food inspection program

I’m in Finland. We have “strong identification services” for logging on government websites, some companies that need to handle personal data, and like.

During the Plague, the people who run the system floated the possibility of providing “has this person been vaccinated? Yes/no” as a type of identification field. And another example that was floated at the same time was “is this person over 18 years old? Yes/no”. Point is, this ID system offers information on need to know basis and the user always sees exactly what information is shared.

So, actually, the most devilish thing to do would be to provide just that information and nothing else. Some weird company needs to know if the user is an adult? Well, just tell them that, and nothing else. If they whine about it, just tell them this system provides them exactly the information they asked for. Also it’s the official government service. No reason whatsoever to doubt its validity! Wait, are they still whining? Well maybe they’re not trustworthy and we shouldn’t provide them this service.

Yeah, you can get them from Ipkea, but note that it’s only available as flatpak from them.

Game that was literally named after a crime involves doing crimes? I’m sure this came as a surprise to Elon, but I must say that I’m a seasoned video game enthusiast, so this wasn’t surprising to me at all.

(Also I never got too far into GTA5. Decided to instead go back to Saints Row. GTAs pretend to be super serious games while still being satirical at the core. Saints Row was basically ramping up wackiness constantly and being unapologetic about it.)

I literally got Signal because my sister told me to get on it. That’s the only contact I have on Signal.

When the Recent Fascist Takeover happened, an American friend asked me for app opinions - I told him Signal was great, aside of the fact that the desktop app keeps getting updated every femtosecond. …we’re still talking over Discord, sad to say.

Signal keeps suggesting I add a contact for my old boss. (Who was a cool guy, but not cool enough to keep in contact with years afterwards.) Actually, when I had an internship a few years afterwards, the new boss’s preferred app was Telegram, so, uh, a red flag? …Yeah, didn’t get that job.

Life was easy back in the day. People asked me to fix their computer. “I installed Firefox 3.5 and ABP. Life should be good for you now.”

Come back years later annnnnnd they have been goaded to use Chrome and have trillions of bullshit apps. Was like “sorry, you have to actually pay me real money to fix this, people in this industry are actually very well compensated”

There’s two variants of Debian: Debian, and “damn, this distro is not as flexible as I’d like, I guess I should have just installed Debian in the first place”.

Just use #.

It was just an obscure character, toiling in the sidelines. Then Twitter happened.

I have a headache and the coffee isn’t working. I read that one heading as “avoid instant reptiles”.

That’s right, I already avoid instant reptiles. I prefer the slightly slower reptiles. Turtles are very cool. 🐢

MacGyver? My childhood hero? Oh what do I think about the series oh boy [5 hours of gushing omitted for brevity]

I have the DVD box right on the shelf in case I have a MacGyver emergency and need to watch MacGyver

Funny thing, the anti-DEI people are usually crying that this should be a meritocracy. Don’t fill diversity quotas, honour the worthy people, they say.

Let’s see here. Should they name the aircraft carrier after a war hero, or the bone spurs guy? Hmm, this is a toughie.

EA has always employed warming kettle strategy. Buy an awesome and beloved independent studio, let them just keep doing awesome stuff, and then go “well, looks like you’re not keeping up with our growth targets, guys, guess we need to keep a closer eye on how you’re doing.” And again. And again.