Notices by Matt Wilcox (mattwilcox@mstdn.social)

@kepano Very cool - what is with the strange treatment of missing spaces sometimes?

eg https://defuddle.md/2015-2020.mattwilcox.net/musing/should-vs-want.html vs https://2015-2020.mattwilcox.net/musing/should-vs-want.html

A lot of words are merged together?

@kepano Woaoaoaaaaaaaaaahhh... nbsp?! Why the hell has my source got a ton of nbsp's in it?!

This has to be a side effect from scraping my old website to make the static version that's there now.

Not a you issue - it's a problem for me!

@stevenodb TBH I'm not sure how markdown itself handles   - I'd expect a space being rendered, but then again I also find   is almost always some ancient (and crappy) text engine having spat them out when no-one actually wanted an nbsp. They're rarely intentional.

I'm surprised to see them in my source - but I have had to massage that site over the years - and I suspect some tool somewhere got weird with it while I was scraping it for archiving years ago. @kepano

In an era of tech companies & influencers pushing hard on #AI, I'm sitting here refreshing my knowledge on PHP programming.

Know the fundamentals and:

- enjoy your craft
- spend less money
- don't fear about when the AI providers alter their deals

You'd think that countries already grappling with the terrible impact of having outsourced their manufacturing - and how that is crippling their economy and national security now - might recognise a new outsourcing of fundamental capability. But no.

I'll re-iterate what I said yesterday:

- Once you outsource your manufacturing to other countries, you no longer retain the skills and workforce to spin it back up.
- Once you're reliant on outsourced work, the people you outsourced to have the power and get to dictate terms.

AI is *exactly* the same thing.

Once it's been relied on long enough that there are not enough juniors with the fundamental knowledge, few to no seniors left... that's the end of your ability to not rely on AI providers.

Human 2.0.alpha-1 changelog:

- Re-distributed weightings on dopamine receptors to favour observation-class events over exploitation-class events. Should fix bugs #deforestation, #racism, and #hoarding

- Fixed glitch where levels taken in Religion were not impacting available actions. Should fix #christianAtrocities and related bugs.

- Early patch for broken logic-loop implementation causing some Humans to get stuck in repeat actions without processing new inputs

- Lowered anxiety point pool

Human 2.0.alpha-2 changelog:

- Some instances of Human prior to 2.0.alpha-1 were not capable of parsing the updated Gender data-types. Note: Moving from Boolean to Array is intended. Users stuck on the 1.x branch expecting boolean data-types are strongly encouraged to run a patch update or risk system instability.

- Wisdom teeth no longer impact actual Wisdom scores

Hilariously - on iOS - I redownloaded Doppler, and had it import the stuff in Apple Music. It imported my library: and it is displaying my albums properly as far as I can tell.

Though I am still left with missing tracks from albums that Apple FUCKING DELETED. Because Apple didn’t have rights for them. My own, ripped from my CDs tracks. That I no longer have my CDs of. Or even a drive to rip CDs from.

Assholes.

Apple have screwed up my personal local collection of music for the last time.

Anyone have recommendations for open source iTunes like application for osx and Linux that won’t auto-fuck-up my content with “Apple style magical” metadata screw ups?

What in the ever loving hell is THIS that just popped up on my machine?

WHAT is asking for permission? WHAT program does this dialog belong to?

I can not stress this enough - I was doing NOTHING at the time this popped up.

This *screams* bad-actor program or phishing attack:

- No details on the trigger event
- No details about what program called it
- Non-native window and controls

Willing to bet, therefor, it's some Adobe cloud bullshit I never wanted - but... no. Just no. All of the no.

@anemone @evacide What a crazy argument. Let’s dismiss one of the most influential, profitable, old as civilisation things humans like to do (jack off, seek stuff to jack off to) and say “or don’t”. Let’s assume there’s no core reason that porn is so wildly popular in all cultures and has been for as long as humans have been able to make pictures. Let’s… “just not”.

That’ll work.

Just had one of those "peeking over the edge of a cliff" type reactions to realising this:

I'm early 40's. I can reasonably expect that I'm half-way through life. I can reasonably expect to see just as much "levels of change" in future as I already have...

...I was born with a coal-fire, milk delivered to the door, no internet at all, no mobile phones, computers only at schools.

Today AI can create believable video from single photos and _everything_ relies on computer networks, somewhere.

@matt Can it also stop Adobe making my Finder a real freaking mess by dumping their hot-garbage-i-didn't-ask-for in the root of my home directory?

That directory contains 1 (one) file.

I loath Adobe software these days.

If you use Mastodon; please pay for your use. Please.

This is not the corporate web of Twitter and Google. No company is paying for your use of this service. Your use of the service is not being sold to ad companies.

You use it? That is costing your admin owner literal actual money.

Pay for things you like. Or they go away. Or they stay but get taken over by exploitative people that will eventually destroy it.

Please, find your instance owner and pay them some money.

Thanks.

@tchambers I have seen one “podcast” on there (vichiban) and did try to find it on my podcast app of choice @overcastfm - nope; it’s just a YouTube channel. Not a podcast.

That said; it seems an increasing trend that podcast just means “a regular show where a group of people talk” and nothing more. I almost want podcast apps to parse YouTube feeds and download the audio portion of the video.

@tyil @graphicore @lgm @halla @celesteh @federicomena @doctormo Oh I agree with you. But persuading others to change viewpoints isn’t achieved through only one method, and to me it seemed unlikely head on challenges were going to work here. So; I took the other tactic. If people can be persuaded to change their choices for personal impact reasons, it’s a start that may soften them to consider the _actual_ reasons.

@tyil @graphicore @lgm @halla @celesteh @federicomena @doctormo Or to put it another way; arguing people into other viewpoints isn’t a one step process. Often by arguing you just reinforce their position if they’re emotionally attached to it. So, you have to find a way to achieve the practical thing first (end an undesirable action) and then work on persuading them to your side. Not try pounding a nail harder.

@graphicore @lgm @halla @celesteh @federicomena @doctormo More practically and usefully: Why put yourself in the situation of “picking a side” on a clearly controversial issue, where multiple orgs have seen enough to officially cut ties, when there are surely many other people who could enjoy a spotlight and benefit the actual topic - without the risk? Why choose to do this? Pragmatically, does the move make sense?

Have people over 45 realised how bat-shit-insane phone calls are yet?

“It’s perfectly normal that anyone at any time can interrupt my life with absolutely no context and has to be engaged with exactly then and at no other time”

Have they realised that “why don’t people call my business if they’ve been on the website” is because entire generations of people *hate phone calls*? It’s the most hostile form of communication?

No joke; you won’t get my business if I have to call you. Or you call me.

@fae2535 Because that's how federation works. Your own server may not have seen all the responses from other servers yet. It's a technical limitation of not being a centralised service.