Notices by Jim Salter (jimsalter@fosstodon.org)

This was the state of text generative models only six years ago. Hard to believe, as all pervasive as models like chatgpt are these days.

I don't think I've ever in my life wished a technological genie back into a bottle... until now. It can't be done, of course. But we are not--as a culture, and frankly as a species--ready for this technology in SO many different ways.

Bring back the hilariously inept candy hearts; take back the deceptively eloquent artificial idiots. Please...?

Got ballsy and took Scooty Puff Jr out for a short local errand today. Saw a long slick patch of thin ice at the top of a hill I needed to make a left through, and decided to give it a shot... ALMOST made it, lol.

Picked the bike back up, remounted, and went on my merry way while giving the friend who watched it happen a thumbs up. I was annoyed when it happened, but on the way home I couldn't wipe the grin off my face.

Nobody understood why I liked getting my ass kicked in the dojo, either...

Here's the thing: facing a scary challenge and handling it is rewarding as hell, **even if you technically failed.**

In some cases, failing is more rewarding than succeeding--it teaches you that failure is survivable. Failure is okay. Failure is worth *risking*, and you're tough enough to take it.

Getting your ass kicked every once in a while is good for you. I'm glad I'm still getting mine kicked after half a century on this ball of dirt. It reminds me that I'm not just here, but ALIVE.

But you know what's worse than the drug ads? The Dell ad for the "AI PC" where it literally, deadpan, there's no joke here, tells you that Copilot is going to save you HOURS A DAY, EVERY DAY of drudge work.

Why do we tolerate this shit?

Amazon Prime offered me a "Livestream" of classic SNL episodes. With ads. No fast forward, no pause, no rewind. How is this "streaming" again? But fuck it. Classic SNL. Sounds good, let's go.

About fifty ads for a psoriasis drug that includes suicidal ideations as a side effect go by. Then fifty more for a different drug that treats Crohn's disease and its side effects are EVERYTHING. Like literally everything, to the point that the announcer actually says "these aren't all the side effects."

Healthy life coach type shit right here

@badnetmask @linuxnerd not gonna lie, I had fun with it. Technically it's a much better presentation with the actual deck available, but hey, how often do you get the chance to see somebody take a live hard drive failure laugh it off and keep rolling? 🤣

Well that was fun--my laptop's M.2 drive coughed up a hairball something like thirty minutes into my (storage!) talk at #ato2025 .

The laptop immediately hard rebooted, and I delivered the last fifteen minutes of my talk blind, with "journal recovery aborted" ext4 errors infinitely scrolling across the big screen beside me.

I saw several folks in the crowd snap pics... Can anybody send me one? That felt like for the scrapbook! 😅

https://2025.allthingsopen.org/sessions/storage-fundamentals

Growing up, my heroes were steely eyed, laconic, hyper-competent people who Got The Needful Done.

Whether it's a power company lineman out fixing a blown transformer in a storm, or a grizzled master sergeant figuring out how to solve a company-scale problem with a platoon, we're talking about people who say little, and don't think a problem ends with "I don't know" but BEGINS with "I don't know YET."

It feels like society has moved on from that. But I haven't. Those are STILL my heroes.

The #FSF wanted to know why I'd cancelled recurring billing immediately after my membership auto-renewed. So I told them.

I picked my middle kid up from smart kid summer camp today. Behold his robotics project, which he named "Unfortunate Son" 🤣

@awfulwoman me too, but I was WILDLY more optimistic about practical FTL travel back then. I didn't really understand why Fermi's Paradox *isn't* a paradox at all until sometime in my early thirties, IIRC.

This is the best take on Fermi's Paradox that I've ever seen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Not sure if true story or merely funny parable, but I WANT TO BELIEVE

In this case, the best "proof" that this is an AI generated image was doing a reverse image search and finding the uncropped original on Imgur.

With the pizza box and Monster energy drink cans visible, it's a lot more obvious that the image isn't legit. But what happens when somebody crops out any inconvenient "tells" BEFORE a fake "photo" is ever posted to begin with?

I'm not CW'ing this, because this isn't actually about politics: it's about #AI.

Somebody spun up this image for a quick meme. It's not a high-intensity effort, it's a shitpost. And it's convincing enough that you know, and I know, that we ALL know, an awful lot of people are going to think it's a real photo of these two.

Does it matter if people think this *particular* shitposted image is legit? No. But stand by for even the shittiest disinformation efforts to get a LOT more convincing.

@killyourfm it was the only thing that worked for me, when my lower back began stiffening and hurting so badly it took me a minute to stand all the way erect when getting out of an office chair, close to ten years ago now.

Turned out, it wasn't my back at all. It was my TFLs (a stringy muscle running down the outside of the thigh) refusing to release, which my erectors had to fight--and TFLs are bigger and stronger than erectors, so.

(1/2)

@killyourfm nothing worked, until I found this one therapist who said "I know how to fix this, and it's not your back. But it's going to HURT."

It felt like being turned over to the women of an enemy tribe for torture. She worked on me for FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT. I very literally laughed through tears of pain because it was either that or sob, but I was like you know what, I expect my clients to trust ME, and I'm HER client, so we'll find out.

I literally BOUNCED off that damn table. Amazing.

@killyourfm probably not really available where you are right now, but deep tissue massage would very likely work also.

of course, it hurts a HELL of a lot more than the hot springs, for anything short of "almost literally boiling"...

I have rarely felt so brutally attacked.