Powderhorn
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org
Editor and tech enthusiast
At some point, I have to admit neither is true. Let’s see …
Wage slave and vandweller.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
My ex had an uncle with exactly my voice. Cadence, accent, inflection … it was uncanny.
- Comment on 6 days ago:
This was infuriating to me when I started college as a CS major. I dropped out after Intro because they weren’t giving us anything worth remembering.
- Comment on Vince Zampella, video game developer behind 'Call of Duty' franchise, killed in Ferrari crash 6 days ago:
I had no connection to him, nor do I truly care, but … really? Ferrari in the hed? Holy framing, Batman. A simple “car accident” would have acquitted itself just fine.
This is like the hyperdetailed “get the name of the dog” that a certain generation expected. Fluffy doesn’t matter, and neither does a Ferrari.
- Comment on No, I will not identify all the pictures with bicycles in them. 6 days ago:
I’m going to disagree here. It must have two wheels. I get the reference, but you didn’t nail the landing.
- Comment on Touch Screens Are Over. Even Apple Is Bringing Back Buttons. 6 days ago:
The push to re-physicalize interfaces has even led to an unexpected side gig for Dr. Plotnick, the academic authority on buttons. Companies are tapping her to consult on how to improve their physical controls.
Well played.
- Comment on Journalists convinced a AI Vending Machine Things to give them free stuff like a PS5 1 week ago:
It was my first reporting job. Yeah, at 44. And short of a few interviews, I was just rewriting shit.
I’ve been an editor for decades and have had to deal with plagiarism (thankfully, nothing too significant), so as a guardrail, it made sense. Editors approach writing with a far more critical eye than a recent J-school grad.
- Comment on The LCD Steam Deck is no longer being manufactured 1 week ago:
My god; they’re robbing us!
- Comment on Journalists convinced a AI Vending Machine Things to give them free stuff like a PS5 1 week ago:
Honestly, I found value in asking an LLM to paraphrase press releases I was rewriting. It just saved me from accidentally plagiarizing. It was pretty grueling, as I quickly learned that feeding in a full story yields wildly inappropriate results, so I reverted to a graf at a time. Within that scope, one can check against errors; asking it to paraphrase entire DOE releases was worse than an abject failure.
It’s a tool. You aren’t using a hammer for a situation that calls for a screwdriver. People are being stupid about this basic understanding.
- Comment on Microsoft Will Be Ending Support For This Popular Software In October 2026 - SlashGear 1 week ago:
Popular? I mean, really? Quark wasn’t even popular, but at least you could get shit done with it. Then, of course, InDesign swooped in (Adobe gave us free copies at the 2003 SND conference … they weren’t fucking around with trying to change the software we used). But no one liked Quark to start, and it was expensive as fuck, so everyone was like “let’s switch to a different monopoly, as it will be better.”
What puzzles me is why MS made Publisher in the first place. It was less capable than fucking Aldus PageMaker, arrived at the wrong time and was never widely adopted. This is more like putting your dog down after it started running into walls.
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
Don’t geographyshame!
- Comment on The LCD Steam Deck is no longer being manufactured 1 week ago:
Inflation is a bitch. That’s tame compared to, say, beef.
- Comment on The LCD Steam Deck is no longer being manufactured 1 week ago:
I fully agree. Industry is simply not set up for a sustainable model in which price-conscious consumers can stay in the game.
- Comment on The LCD Steam Deck is no longer being manufactured 1 week ago:
To a certain extent, this is the equivalent of being shocked that Intel discontinued 386 production. Or that Google is no longer manufacturing Pixel 3s. It’s the nature of the industry.
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
That’s a wildly incomplete list. I guess if you’re out east, that might feel like a full list, but if you’ve ever lived somewhere with arroyos, you’ve never experienced brooks or runs. I mean, short of Mel Brooks and having diarrhea.
There’s an old joke about growing up in Phoenix: That one does not associate rivers or bridges with water.
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
OK, I was really hoping someone would make this opening.
The paper in Port Angeles, Wash., is the Peninsula Daily News. They ran a special section decades ago with some … unfortunate folios. The whole thing ran with Penisnula Daily News.
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
I think “major streams” are more generally referred to as “rivers.”
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
Motherfuckers.
- Comment on Journalists convinced a AI Vending Machine Things to give them free stuff like a PS5 1 week ago:
Ahem. ISO 8601 or GTFO.
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
Why can’t we just make it an even 256?
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
How the fuck do you cram 257 rivers into a space that size? Like, we can’t even manage the Colorado (no, the other one … how we have one flowing through Austin escapes me).
- Comment on Concept Artists Say Generative AI References Only Make Their Jobs Harder [TWIV] 1 week ago:
It is absolutely astounding how far executives are removed from workflows. And they only want so much automation, lest they can no longer justify being so top-heavy.
- Comment on Google sues web scraper for sucking up search results ‘at an astonishing scale’ 1 week ago:
Crimea is a peninsula.
- Comment on Journalists convinced a AI Vending Machine Things to give them free stuff like a PS5 1 week ago:
You would have a tungsten cube in your ass.
- Comment on Journalists convinced a AI Vending Machine Things to give them free stuff like a PS5 1 week ago:
I hate when I get to a vending machine, only to find out it’s out of tungsten cubes.
- Comment on Nvidia plans heavy cuts to GPU supply in early 2026 [OC3D] 1 week ago:
Thanks, Obama!
- Comment on Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox 1 week ago:
Well, that’s not good news.
- Comment on Google AI summaries are ruining the livelihoods of recipe writers: ‘It’s an extinction event’ 1 week ago:
The Joy of Oofing.
- Comment on Google AI summaries are ruining the livelihoods of recipe writers: ‘It’s an extinction event’ 1 week ago:
Yeah, that’s how I did it. There were fucking hundreds of them in the van, but I mourned zero.
- Comment on Google AI summaries are ruining the livelihoods of recipe writers: ‘It’s an extinction event’ 1 week ago:
There are only so many ways to make chicken Marsala. At a certain point, recipe writers are chasing a dwindling market.
Let’s take the example of chicken Marsala, specifically: You find one that works, and you’re not searching anymore. It’s like the baked salmon I make: Yep, the one from the '80s still works.
I feel there’s a very small window in which one looks for new recipes, as one really only needs a dozen or so before there’s enough variety that things don’t get old. If you want something else, well, that’s what restaurants are for.