its_me_xiphos
@its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org
- Comment on Who Will Save the Internet From Disappearing? 23 hours ago:
I do for everything. Alas…new video games :-(. Going to need to go back to ye olde strategy guides. Which, reminds me. I used to own the TIE Fighter series for PC back in the…gosh…mid 90s? The strategy guide had an entire storyline woven into it from the “main characters” perspective. Super cool.
- Comment on Who Will Save the Internet From Disappearing? 2 days ago:
Incredible! I love this so much, and Boston (love that dirty water).
There was the below; the original now only accessible via the Internet archive. Please do not ask my how often I think of the Roman Empire. Sites like your link and mine are what I miss. Neocities has some of that but its not the same.
[web.archive.org/web/…/www.roman-empire.net/](Roman Empire.net)
- Comment on Who Will Save the Internet From Disappearing? 2 days ago:
That’s a really great perspective. Google is unusable now, I concur. I tried looking up a guide for Nova Roma (sorta like a classic Sierra Caesar game) water management, and my Buddha it was pages of AI guides, ads, and slop from the same three sources. I give up.
- Comment on Who Will Save the Internet From Disappearing? 2 days ago:
Its sad. We’ve lost so much over the last decade. Many of the wonderful and hobbyist passion projects from the early internet are gone too. Think of niche sites by historians, archeologists, train enthusiasts, etc that were a wealth of information. Much of that is gone
- Comment on SpaceX Is Junk. That’s What the Bond Market Says 5 days ago:
Its a small club and you ain’t in it.
I often discuss that these aren’t scams. They aren’t rigged. This would denote something anti-lawful or downright deceitful. No. These are perfectly legal and transparent transfers of wealth. Doesn’t make it any less angering, but its important to understand how few economics systems in use in the world are designed to be equitable.
- Comment on LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach 1 week ago:
All good with me. Feel free to PM (DM?) Me with reasoning and if there’s research you’re aware of that supports. I admit I know too little.
- Comment on LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach 1 week ago:
Ah yes, Lastpass. You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Come. We must be cautious.
- Comment on LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach 1 week ago:
That’s your new password friend! For everything! “My-brain-isnt-made-for-35c”. /s
- Comment on DuckDuckGo’s AI Feature Is Telling Users That Trump Died of Rabies Earlier This Month 1 week ago:
I don’t google anymore. Any AI search turns up reddit as a source. It is out of control.
I believe we need to return to curated blog rolls and web link sharing. Like the old days. Before the dark times.
- Comment on AI crash coming closer? South Korea’s Kospi plunges 10%, triggers trading halt 2 weeks ago:
Here are my three best guesses, which are as good as anyone’s on this type. Maybe it’ll garner some discussions because the industries ability to seemingly break all barriers and avoid the cliff thus far are surprising:
- Memory companies will be a sign first.
- AI recruiting companies (Mercor) slow recruiting and don’t post as many jobs or at such high rates.
- Utility usage decreases in areas with major AI data centers. (I really wish ibjad access to data on this).
- Comment on US AI stock sell-off shakes markets from Wall Street to Asia 2 weeks ago:
\o/2_^
- Comment on We are witnessing the slow death of the prestige career 2 weeks ago:
Maybe Wessified? Nah. Doesn’t work.
- Comment on We are witnessing the slow death of the prestige career 2 weeks ago:
Yeah. No love lost. Terrible firms lead by narciastic nepo babies. Who, due to the power of networking, get lucrative contracts to harm in the name of efficiency. I don’t think there’s a good word for that. There should be.
- Comment on There's never been an easier time to boycott Microsoft, the most boring video game publisher in the business 4 weeks ago:
Thanks!
- Comment on There's never been an easier time to boycott Microsoft, the most boring video game publisher in the business 4 weeks ago:
Thanks. Its hard to find good video game journalism at all.
- Comment on Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized: How companies are gaming the chatbot internet 4 weeks ago:
I do miss the internet of the early 2000s.
- Comment on Electric cars are starting to take over the world 4 weeks ago:
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good!
Cars suck. Huge cars suck more. But without the biking infrastructure and culture of, say, the Dutch, it’ll be hard to get people in small cities, suburban, and rural areas off cars.
I went from a bolt EV with a 108 mile commute across Oregon to a bike in the Netherlands. Didn’t touch a car for a year. I could get everywhere by bike, carried my Xmas tree home via bike, and even on rural rides the culture and rules mean cars wait and work around you. Its incredible.
You can not hope to replace cars until bikes are the cultural, social, and urban planning focus of private transportation.
- Comment on AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 Billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S. 4 weeks ago:
I thought that myself and honestly I don’t know.
- Comment on AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 Billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S. 4 weeks ago:
Love what you did here…but I don’t think the same logic applies to data centers.
- Comment on A new MMO announcement is more exciting than all the other SGF news combined: Thanks, Guild Wars 3. 4 weeks ago:
Never played GW or GW2. Maybe I’ll hop onto this just for something new.
- Comment on AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 Billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S. 4 weeks ago:
Of course! Thanks for asking for clarification.
- Comment on AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 Billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S. 4 weeks ago:
Let’s go to the Dalles in lovely Oregon. There is a Google data center there that draws water from the public supplies. It draws so much in a day, that at times the need for water in the whole community outstrips the ability of infrastructure to supply water. So people in the area see their water slow or cease altogether. The water is drawn so fast and in such amounts, wells dry up as the water table drops.
Water does eventually evaporate or get discharged from said data center, but its not like adding it in is an instantaneous event. It also doesn’t reenter the same system. Like picking up flour and trying to drop it back in the bag. Some ends up on your counter.
The data center in the Dalles is one hell of a story, too, for reason beyond that.
- Comment on GOG apologizes for emailing Nazi runes to its followers 4 weeks ago:
What…what the hell?
On further research, I had no idea CD Projekt Red sold GoG Games. CD Projekt sold GOG to its original co-founder, Michał Kiciński, in December 2025 for approximately $25.2 million. I’m downloading what I bought over the years and closing my account.
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO says bot internet traffic has overtaken humans 4 weeks ago:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I2P doesn’t seem to fill the void. I think what is missing from that is the “norm” of the old internet. The internet was a playground with tons of hobby projects and experiments in its earlier days. I don’t see TOR, I2P, etc, building the same playground because the novelty and ease of access can’t be replicated.
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO says bot internet traffic has overtaken humans 4 weeks ago:
Bots are, essentially, a virus. We are at the point now where they are killing the host. That is if they haven’t already moved us to the point of no return.
A new internet isn’t going to happen. We are stuck with the anonymous rage inducing or monetization system that took over because the systems of power let it.
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO says bot internet traffic has overtaken humans 4 weeks ago:
AI customer service bots, which I know are soulless firewalls really more than helpers, are beyond frustrating.
- Comment on The Dead Economy Theory 5 weeks ago:
They don’t care. They also are not stupid. Its both part of their upbringing and their character. But more importantly their entire moral, ethical, religious, and societal compass is pointed to “reap it all.”
They’ve been educated and had short term reinforced since they were in Pampers. “Short term profits,” “Can’t take it with you,” “yolo,” and other varieties of get it while you can. There’s also continued moral and religious approval for this behavior. Hell, they manufacture systems of approval when they can’t find it out in the world already. Thiel is masterful at this self deception.
Take for instance altruism. You had that altruism movement (the crypto bros went fill tilt on that, name escapes me at the moment) now its the “school moral ambition.” Its like Nietzsche’s worst philosophical nightmare come to bear. Doing good at the end of your life makes up for being a total nightmare during it. Make as much as you can as fast as you can so you can give a pittance back. That’s one style of justification the ultra rich like Gates give us.
The entire institution of contemporary wealth is both a mentality and world view. That’s hard to counter.
- Comment on The Dead Economy Theory 5 weeks ago:
There are people who want violence. They relish in it because of the power. War, economic, domestic, people exist that want violence.
Look, I strive for peace because I’ve seen war. But the kind of violence being perpetrated on people, nature, and general “good” is well funded, unrestrained, and unrelenting. It’s beyond a war in the conventional sense. I believe more people are looking to meet that violence with violence because its the only option left.
- Comment on A Witcher Expansion? In 2026? 1 month ago:
Gotta keep it alive since Netflix is actively trying to kill it.
Joking aside, great to see a game like this get new content.
- Comment on Students Are Learning Less and Getting Higher Grades Because of AI, Study Finds 1 month ago:
Former professor here!
Students these days are fucked. Professors are fucked too. I’ll keep this brief and give you three quick observations:
- US, Canadian, and UK students are increasingly under pressure to pay more for everything. When you need to choose between working to pay rent and studying, you outsource to AI. Student athletes are, by far, the worst due to the exploitation opportunity athletics programs view them as. Practice more, study less, shop it to AI.
- Student evaluations caused me more pain than anything else. I won a student curated Teacher of the Year award at my university. I’m good at teaching and love it. My student evals were from the ones that got bad grades. Those students spent more time challenging a C or below than actually studying. I know other professors grade inflate just to avoid bad evals and lost time. The eval system needs reform.
- The rapidity in the decline in critical thinking, writing, and problem solving skills is shocking. One moment that sticks with me was when a student insisted Flint, MI didn’t have a water problem but a political leadership problem. OK, fair, explain. They just stared at their laptop blankly. Started typing. Read a chatgpt response. That stuck with me. They probably heard a talking point or used AI for their question and had zero understanding of the situation at all.