#tech rant

[official-locke-writing]

Tech rant.

I kept avoiding switching to Firefox because the last time I used it, it looked like this:

"Firefox and Ublock Origin" would appear in comments all the time about ad discussions, but I wouldn't budge from my old browser, Opera GX, because of their customization features. My whole device theme is black and green as I have a pavilion laptop with green lights.

I mean everything is green.

So naturally, I wanted a green browser... but then the ads on Opera started coming... banner ads and added shortcuts to shopping websites on my home screen. Adguard would "miss" ads on YouTube and certain websites. Hella lame. "Hackerman" didn't seem worth it anymore. I eventually got fed up and switched, thinking everything would be forced to a certain color and it would throw off my vibe. I didn't know this, but they have this extension called Firefox Color, and you can do this with it:

That, my friend, is a distraction-free, dark mode, custom animated taskbar background and color. No paid search suggestions, the shortcuts are tucked in the corner neatly, and not a single ad in my entire browsing experience. No messy buttons, no unnecessary AI, clean interface, and fast. Really fast.

I'm both shocked and impressed. This drives my ADHD-riddled brain to the search bar instead of everywhere else on the screen, meaning I don't have to sit and struggle to remember why I pulled up the tab. I love it.

Firefox and Ublock Origin, guys. Give it a shot. It's not like what it used to be.

[moonsworndandelion]

"Younger generations do not know how to make a pdf / format a thumb drive / other tech stuff and we failed them"

Yes. Yes it's not their fault, and yes I think basic computer skills should be taught at school (no idea what the current curricular are here and now so no judgment), but that's not all. That wont be solved even if everyone magically knew how to save an image or how to convert a song to mp3.

I just spent 20 minutes trying to get Windows to stop downloading and installing stuff on my computer without asking me and I've been through at least five forum just to know in which setting I could possibly disable it, only to discover that that control panel isn't available on my version of Windows.

(And I wouldn't even have noticed it if I hadn't tried to uninstall a software I installed a few weeks prior, and found a bunch of stuff I definitely did not install !!!)

My current two best options seemed to be downloading the control panel from somewhere I deem safe enough in the hope that it works, or trying my hand at modifying the registry or something that sounds like it could cause lots of problems if I mess it up.

And I majored in computer science so I figure I'm a little less helpless about this than the average windows user.

I don't want to automatise something or make some advanced obscure tech- savy things on my computer.

I just want Windows to fucking ask me for consent before doing stuff.

[adrekiy0]

lukewarm take: if microsoft hates third-party emulation and piracy so much, they should push for disc drives to come back and make their own emulator that works with xbox discs (totally not just me being salty about games i physically own being impossible to find anywhere)

[maeve-99]

ngl finding a phone that still has a regular headphone jack as well as an additional SD card slot (for storing images, music + video) is like finding a needle in a haystack. When did they stop including those? micro-sd card slots have always been standard in android phones. They remove stuff in the name of innovation, why is this so-called innovation always tied to an alternative that costs more and is increasingly consumer-unfriendly, taking away control from the customer?

So they take away the sd card slot so they can sell their overpriced phones with tiny storage and try to sell you a cloud storage/backup option for yet another monthly fee. They build computers in a way so you can't upgrade or repair them anymore, just so you need to buy a new one.

I don't feel like I'm living in the future. In the 2000/2010s we were restricted by technology, now we are restricted by capitalism.

[fnlufrs]

I've been hyperfixating on e-paper tablets and I want to get my hands on a remarkable tablet so I can develop an app so it can be the perfect neovim-for-epaper plugin as the perfect development environment and I've realized that this needs to be even more based. give us an eink display with raspberry pi dsi compatibility and we'll do the rest.

literally could be as expensive as $200 and it'd be awesome we'll put a speaker on it. i wanna make a complex system of audio cues to make up for the display lag that makes vim bindings look intuitive. we'd make a kindle oasis style hand bump except it'd have 18650s in it. it'd last for like a month on a charge

[that-one-lotr-orc]

So I was on a holiday in Sweden, and on the ride back, in a bathroom stall on a camping in Danmark, something occurred to me. Danish internet is incredibly shit.

I was sitting on the edge of a lake in a nature reservation in Sweden, with maybe 20 people permanently living within 100km, and I got (a bit shotty) 4g. I could send pictures through whatsapp (it took a minute to send, but hey, middle of nowhere, what you expect?).

At the same time, I am taking a shit on a camping in Danmark, trying to read up on my Discord convos, and it just. wont. load. I’m within 20 kilometers of the center of Kopenhagen, AND I CANT GET ENOUGH INTERNET TO LOAD FUCKING DISCORD MESSAGES

Danmark, the fuck?!?

[alan-p-49]

I just hate it when I need an app to do a Bluetooth connection on a device like why??? You're not communicating via WiFi you're doing it through Bluetooth wh-what? Is the app has the fuckin os for the speaker? Why the hell didn't you just put the embedded os in the actual speaker??? So that it knows what to do itself??? You don't need mommy to help you connect to the Bluetooth

Tho fr tho the only good reason I can see for a Bluetooth device to need an app is to update the embedded os in it bc the security on those embedded devices are much more ass than an actual computer especially when it comes to bluetooth BUT THATS IT

[mtjapblogger]

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE: First impressions of Samsung's more affordable, premium tablet.

When it comes to premium tablets, the iPad and the Surface are by far the most popular. Samsung tablets are a complicated mix of good and bad. The Galaxy Tab A tablets are okay for basics like checking email, social media, and reading ebooks. The Galaxy Tab S tablets, like the Galaxy S phones, are high-end and are good for gaming, photo and video editing, and are actually able to replace a laptop…

[1stunseeliefaelass]

I dunno what is going on, but I'm fuming now. TUMBLR KEEPS BREAKING MY HEADER IMAGE. It is NOTHING nsfw, or weird in the slightest. I dunno what their problem apparently is, but a silhouette of Death's HEAD AND FACE is NOT nsfw, at all. Who the hell, keeps messing it up? Is this some stupid glitch that keeps screwing it up? Whatever it is, I would like some answers right about now. Cus I'm done getting screwed over by nonsense and disobedient technology. Pardon the rant, but technology breaking or being stupid is one of my most anger inducing peeves.

Update: It has been fixed now. Feel free to ignore the rant now. Admittedly I feel pretty stupid over it. Trust me.

[peanuttoffee]

The Bad Batch finale missing scene

Yeah I needed that…

May the 4th be with you!🙌

[turtleblogatlast]

One of the earliest examples of Leo’s “I’ll do my own thing to accomplish our goal without discussing it with my team first” is in episode one. It’s super, super quick, and ultimately inconsequential, but it subtly sets up a great precedent that I think is very interesting.

When the boys need to grab the medallion from Splinter without Splinter noticing, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie huddle together with Raph taking the lead in trying to devise a plan to get the mystic device. Meanwhile, Leo slinks away and grabs the device by clocking the situation (by knowing his father well enough to predict his actions - something he does with each family member multiple times in the series) and making a move on his own.

It works out perfectly fine, and is ultimately the best move, and it’s honestly okay that he didn’t consult everyone for something so small when it’s such a non issue to get it, but it nicely sets up how this tends to go in the series, including how it goes in the movie.

To be honest episode one is actually really good at setting up a lot of things for each character in the long run, this is just one example that caught my attention, as small and unassuming as it is.

[moonsworndandelion]

also fuck you Spotify for adding ads at the beginning of pocasts even though I use premium

I'm pretty sure TMA didn't choose to make me hear an add for picard or carrefour ad in french

[adrekiy0]

mint machine's refusing to connect to wifi and the hardware clock's lost about four months of time. might pick the nuclear option and try installing arch on it if i can't get shit to work

[shinobicyrus]

One thing my brain keeps going back to about Pacific Rim (besides the rad giant robots) is the whole existence of kaiju organ harvesters and their implications.

Like, you have Hannibal Chau, a bizarre and interesting character, but we’re presented with a black market operation that seems mostly interested in the “alternative medicine” uses of kaiju parts.

But my brain demands to know: what does the corporate kaiju harvesting industry look like? Sure kaiju blood is toxic, but there are plenty of toxic materials that have useful applications. Are there chemical companies studying kaiju organs? Big-Pharma jumping on the kaiju bone-powder bandwagon? Are bio-tech firms studying kaiju hide to make tougher materials? Agribusinesses clamoring to acquire kaiju crap for fertilizer?

I’m picturing something like the age of whaling, when humans hunted giant animals and carved them up to feed insatiable industries. Whale-oil lighting lanterns for entire cities, whale-bone being used in everything from knick-knacks, tools, umbrellas, and corsets. Ambergris alone was used in perfumes, medicines, cooking. It was even added to wine as an aphrodisiac.

We glimpsed how kaiju affected pop-culture. Now picture a kaiju smashing a city, but the stock market going up for construction companies (rebuilding the cities), vulture real estate (buying the destroyed land cheap), and all the other corporations that profit from the systematic dismantling of a kaiju corpse and making money off of its parts. Sure, a city was roughed up and who knows how many thousands are dead, but it’s a better windfall when a kaiju makes landfall. It’s always less profitable when jaegers kill them too quickly; sea-based extractions are so much more expensive.

Imagine entire industries, entire economies that don’t just make money from the devastation of kaiju attacks, but grow dependent on them. And then the laws, the squabbles over those valuable, resource-rich kaiju corpses. If a kaiju attacks one country but keeps rampaging and is killed in the country next door, who has claim over the body? The party who was damaged more by it or the country where the corpse physically is? Bidding wars over “cleanup” contracts that cut corners and are only interested in collecting those sweet, sweet, kaiju parts as fast as possible, even if their official mandate is supposed to be the safe removal and cleanup of a toxic substance.

Once jaegers started getting efficient at killing kaiju, the people with all the money became less interested in solving the problem of kaiju attacks and switched to merely managing the industries that kaiju-killing feeds.

What? You want to put more resources into R&D to try and close the Breach? Whatever for? The kaiju comes out, jaegers kill it, and the “host country” gets the proceeds from the kaiju’s body. It’s a win-win for everyone. Why waste time, money, and effort solving a problem that isn’t a problem anymore?

Everything is under control.

[ganondoodle]

me: finally im able to cope with how much i hate totk and can fuel that energy into other things :)

nintendy: the shiekah tech just dissappeared and no one knows why or cares enough to investigate it lol. lmao. its gone bc the calamity is gone or something even tho it literally isnt bc ganondorf is right there haha lol, stop asking, why do you care. just forget it existed and look at that sexy goatman and glue instead!! glue! isnt that wild?? also its totally a direct, 100% same universe and exact same characters, despite them act totally out of character, sequel to botw-

[devi-nova]

i see way too many people calling stuff ai when its literally just..... hardcoded pattern recognition......

whoop de doo the thing you made for a specific purpose fufilled that purpose. thats not an ai thats just a program. shut up.

"oh this new ai powered webcam can zoom in on anything with these four squares on it!!" thats not a fucking ai thats image pattern recognition, all it does is scan the visible area for specific patterns, and once recognized, it zooms in. thats it. a fucking qr code scanner is more complex than that. its not ai. shut up.

"this logo maker uses ai to make images" no it doesnt. it randomizes images within the bounds of set fields and assets. its randomization giving a number of results to choose from. thats not fucking ai. shut up.

a real ai is a program that trains itself to respond to inputs "naturally" without instruction using trial and error, for example if an actual ai was to go through a maze,

step one, makes random movements

by making these random movements and bumping into walls, it learns that bumping into walls is an error

step two, explores randomly without touching walls

the ai doesnt know there is an end goal, however it will learn this if moving in a path that isnt directly connected to the exit is an error

step 3, the ai uses what its learned it should not do, and takes the path that is connected to the exit, and the task is complete.

ai is not pattern recognition, its learned pattern adaptation through time. ai is not randomization of assets. it is randomization with consequences that shapes it into a predictable behaviour. shut. up.