ThePowerOfGeek

Amen. I’ve tried the vibe coding thing but it’s frustrating because a) too often the AI output has some profound problems and it gets annoying ‘babysitting’ it; and b) I usually prefer the challenge of figuring out syntax and implementation issues myself.

If something is taking too long I’ll ask the LLM. But I feel like if I do this too much my skill set will atrophy and I’ll lose my sharpness. So it’s a balancing act.

But this brings up another wider question: where is the line between “occasionally getting AI help” and “vibe coding”? Surely it’s subjective.

Ireland announced yesterday that they will.

It’s almost like he’s full of shit and he’s nothing but a snake oil salesman, eh.

They’ve been talking about replacing software developers with automated/AI systems for a quarter of a century. Probably longer then that, in fact.

We’re definitely closer to that than ever. But there’s still a huge step between some rando vibe coding a one page web app and developers augmenting their work with AI, and someone building a complex, business rule heavy, heavy load, scalable real world system. The chronic under-appreciation of engineering and design experience continues unabated.

Anthropic, Open AI, etc? They will continue to hype their own products with outrageous claims. Because that’s what gets them more VC money. Grifters gonna grift.

Give it about a month and I’m sure there will be (…unfortunately).

For anyone who’s not aware, there are some pretty cool open source Minecraft options. Like Luanti (which is more like a playground for all sorts of FOSS Minecraft variants).

Yeah it’s crazy. They are trying to cater to older users, probably because they feel they can get more money from them.

It should at the very least get a new, better CEO. And also calm down with their focus on getting older users and encouraging user dating services. They have a solid user base with younger users, and should be focused on them and their protection.

But yeah, just shutting down might be the best option.

I second this. There’s a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it’s not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it’s been great.

BTW a lot of it seems to be just inefficient coding as Deepseek has shown.

Kind of? Inefficient coding is definitely a part of it. But a large part is also just the iterative nature of how these algorithms operate. We might be able to improve that via code optimization a little bit. But without radically changing how these engines operates it won’t make a big difference.

The scope of the data being used and trained on is probably a bigger issue. Which is why there’s been a push by some to move from LLMs to SLMs. We don’t need the model to be cluttered with information on geology, ancient history, cooking, software development, sports trivia, etc if it’s only going to be used for looking up stuff on music and musicians.

But either way, there’s a big ‘diminishing returns’ factor to this right now that isn’t being appreciated. Typical human nature: give me that tiny boost in performance regardless of the cost, because I don’t have to deal with. It’s the same short-sighted shit that got us into this looming environmental crisis.

That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

Or… You could just ditch Chrome altogether!

I don’t know why people are so fixated on using Chrome. It’s a crippled browser made by an evil company that is actively looking to screw the user at every turn.

I switched to Firefox when Google essentially killed uBlock Origin on their browser. At first I ran into some problems with some sites not rendering correctly. But it seems like that’s become much less of an issue with later updates. And the best thing is that there are some phenomenal extensions for blocking ads - like a fully-fledged uBlock Origin to name just one. I don’t even see sponsor promotions in YT videos now.

And if you don’t want to deal with Mozilla directly you can use Waterfox instead.

All this dancing around and jumping through hoops to get uBlock Origin working on Chrome is kind of absurd. Just ditch Chrome (and all Blink-based browsers) altogether where you can (I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).

Collectively we should be sending a message to Google whenever we can that we are done with their browser bullshit.

So glad he didn’t get his grubby hands on Arsenal FC in the end.

And once you have them ripped (however you choose to do that), host them via a media server so you can access them from whatever device you like.

I still have one, still in the cellophane. I use it as a coaster.

AOL… America Offline

I’m no longer even confident in modern LLMs to do stuff like convert a table schema or JSON document into a POCO. I tried this the other day with a field list from a table creation script. So it had to do was reformat the fields into a dumb C# model. Inexplicably it did fine except for omitting a random field in the middle of the list. Kinda shakes your confidence in LLMs for even the most basic programming tasks.

It must have been trained on feedback from Accenture employees then.

High five, me too!

At that age I also used to do speed run little programs on the display computers in department stores. I’d write a little prompt welcoming a shopper and ask them their name. Then a response that echoed back their name in some way. If I was in a good mood it was “Hi [name]!”. If I was in a snarky mood it was “Fuck off [name]!” The goal was to write it in about 30 seconds, before one of the associates came over to see what I was doing.

But who else is going to micromanage and bully the employees and strut around self-importantly doing jack shit? /s

Yeah, not good of them to not share that information.

But for anyone who’s wondering, here’s a decent article that goes over the shady companies that discretely own most VPNs apps.

Amusingly, and kind of in counterpoint to the guy who you replied to, this article concludes that Proton is actually a solid VPN option that isn’t beholden to one of those sketchy VPN-hoarding companies. Though they don’t talk about any Israeli influence in Proton TBF. But still, on a general level (excluding the Israel/Palestine thing), Proton seems like one of the better options.

They also recommend Mullvad as a good option. I’ve never used them, but I’ve seen mentioned positively in other articles about VPNs.

ETA: Clarity.

Genitalia (supposed to be gen-Italia - an Italian electricity company. They got rid of their web domain they they finally realized.)