theneverfox
@theneverfox@pawb.social
- Comment on It used to be a library 1 day ago:
Easier than the alternative multiple times over… and these were examples of how powerful it used to be. These were esoteric problems that couldn’t be worked around, either new libraries we were using to do something wired or legacy code we had to interface with
Like I mentioned, normally you could just Google the stack trace and find a discussion on your error immediately. AI is a decent replacement for that at least
- Comment on It used to be a library 2 days ago:
That was never easy to find, Google was never good at finding tangential hints.
It absolutely used to be, it was a huge part of my workflow. You put in the framework/library and one or two related terms, and it would bring up pages of information. If you dug through that, maybe make the terms more general once or twice, you literally would find some random forum post that gives you exactly what you needed. Usually someone else who solved the problem, but occasionally it was just a little detail in something unrelated. Or sometimes there just really was nothing, now it’s all the time
Hell, you used to be able to paste the error directly with the project name and get that specific error through the stack and line numbers. Now, it just sees an error message and abstractes it into “any error message”. After the first few results, it’ll be random stack errors now also from completely different projects
And I have tried to use a local LLM to dig through results, the problem is the information no longer comes up. Between sites closing themselves off to prevent scraping and Google intentionally demolishing their search capabilities, that entire branch of development skill is just gone
It was a stark change, just around 2 years ago I noticed it happening, and it’s only gotten worse
At this point you really need an AI to read through the source if you don’t want to do it yourself
I guess you could contact the developers, but it’s generally faster to figure it out yourself, so I never got into the habit
- Comment on WAR! What is it good for? 2 days ago:
It’s somewhat rare for now, because Russia can only field so many drone jammers. Still common enough that fields of discarded fiber optic lines are a problem that Ukraine is going to have to solve
For cheap war drones, fiber lines are probably only going to get more common as drone warfare tactics develop
- Comment on It used to be a library 2 days ago:
Cool, those would be common information. Easier to find than ever
Hell, if you search it it’ll come up multiple times. Hell, the AI summary will include exactly the lines I’m looking for. Hell, I probably don’t even bother, most of the time I’ll just click through in my IDE and read the relevant bit of the source code myself.
If the answer is in the man pages, the problem is so simple I won’t remember there was a problem
I’m still going to need that single forum post where the author of a framework makes an offhand comment that tangentially hints at the cause of the bug I’m hitting my head against
No amount of man pages are going to tell me I need to downgrade a library, or change a configuration value no one bothered to properly document
- Comment on It used to be a library 2 days ago:
I strongly beg to differ
3 years ago, when I searched for something I found it. Even the esoteric little details buried in an old forum weren’t that hard to find
Now? It’s fine if you want the most common information, but it’s impossible to find the little details
And those little details are critical for developers. A single sentence can give you an answer that could easily take hours or days to figure out
Programmers aren’t only switching to AI because it’s easier… The old way of doing things has been crippled
- Comment on What is behind the current Lemmy meme about 4 being a private key? 2 days ago:
It’s kinda like locking your door by putting a wedge in the crack. Probably, no one is going to try to open your door anyways, and probably, even if they did no one is going to take 5 seconds to examine the door and figure it out
But if someone does, it’s laughably easy to figure it out
- Comment on WAR! What is it good for? 3 days ago:
It’s exaggeration… The people flying the drones are generally very physically fit and flying by fiber optics out in the field so the drones can’t be disrupted. They’re also carrying weapons and other heavy gear, and escorted by friendlies, in case someone tries to get the jump on them
But it’s funnier to play into the fact that drones are genuinely dominating the battlefield
- Comment on WAR! What is it good for? 3 days ago:
He’d probably have a fancy insulated case… One that he didn’t read the directions on, which say “for short trips” and “keep of direct sunlight”
The case gleams, prominently clipped to the combat webbing, very much in direct sunlight
- Comment on unfactorizable 4 days ago:
LMAO what? That’s wild
- Comment on Why is "sunsetting" used as a term to indicate a service is shutting down? 5 days ago:
The sun is setting, but it’s not going to immediately become dark outside. The light from the sun still refracts even when you can no longer see it
It’s not about the sun - the sun is the programming efforts, and they’re moving on to somewhere else. It’s about the light, the software that came from the sun, and it’ll still exist but diminish naturally
- Comment on Let us end the stovetop war with the real chanp 5 days ago:
Sounds pretty convectional to me
- Comment on Why was Hitler all about "blonde hair and blue eye Aryan?" When he would not be in the ball park of one or exhibit any of the traits he was looking for? 1 week ago:
Because Hitler didn’t produce the Nazi movement, it was a collection of historical forces and movements that cleared the way for him to take power
Hitler didn’t create the Nazi movement, the Nazi movement created Hitler
- Comment on 2027 gonna be our year Lemmy! 1 week ago:
IDK, 2025 seems like it was worse. In 2025 there was an attempted global fascist takeover, this year they’ve been tiredly playing the same old beats seemingly knowing that it won’t work
Like we have some new pointless wars, and that certainly sucks, but I’d describe last year as legit terror and this year as heavily accelerated inevitable decay
- Comment on Banana for scale 1 week ago:
They probably made the meter about a yard because that’s roughly 1 stride (left step right step)
Which is what’s really cool about imperial. It’s very human, for length and temperature at least. A mile is about a 20 minute walk, 0-100 degrees is about the range most people can endure with reasonable comfort, and I have no idea what the volume measurements are based on. 1 cup is what a small child drinks in a sitting, a quart is more than a normal adult drinks, and teaspoons/tablespoons are really only useful in baking, and even then it’s only sometimes
They must’ve had really weird table wear when they standardized imperial
- Comment on Not real hits too 3 weeks ago:
It was utter garbage for a while, like such bad writing and so obviously formulaic that I’d get pissed off about it. Especially the Dr strange one…I was pissed because i was excited for another dr strange one and it wasn’t even enjoyable. It’s makes no sense, they did nothing with the characters, it was like a whirlwind trailer to set up new overarching plot lines
Part of it might be that my expectations dropped to the floor after that, but I’ve found that after they cancelled everything and course corrected they’ve gradually gotten better. If doomsday is good I’ll probably get invested again, I am excited to see the mutants get involved in the main plot
The spider man series are still good though, aside from lady web…I don’t know what was going on with that
- Comment on secrets of the universe 3 weeks ago:
Thank you, that’s one less mystery to keep me up at night
- Comment on secrets of the universe 3 weeks ago:
I’m really curious about the context of that slide
- Comment on How come we still haven't engineered a solution to this?? 5 weeks ago:
It’s actually a really simple solution, on a better toaster you can push the lever up and pop your food out to easily grab it
- Comment on What was the actual reason for the crusade against NSFW games? 5 weeks ago:
Power. That’s what it always comes down to - money is an indirect form of power, so while you can usually “follow the money”, actors will sometimes chase direct power even at the cost of financial gain
Basically, some groups petitioned the credit card processors to block these sales. The credit card operators used this opportunity as a test - can they leverage their position for direct power, or will the state (or widespread public outcry) stop them?
They were risking basically nothing… They didn’t plan this, they took the opportunity created by special interest groups to test the waters
If it worked out, they could have turned it into massive “innovation”… Think of how much data on people’s behaviors is worth, then picture how much they could charge to control spending habits. It would be a whole new avenue for profit
Since they did receive real resistance, they quietly backed off before the issue could be settled. They’ll try something similar again sooner or later, mark my words
- Comment on What could the US get rid of to balance the budget and make prices drop very quickly? How is some trash or misspent money on thing we no longer need? 5 weeks ago:
Nothing. It’d be funny if it wasn’t sad. The math isn’t mathing, the debt repayment is so high it’ll never be paid off normally
Plus you have private debt, which has also grown to an untenable level
There’s only three ways out of this historically. First, a jubilee… We just say fuck it, all debts are forgiven and we move forward. Second is a revolution where the new government doesn’t acknowledge the past debt
Finally, we have the option that’s actually going to happen, hyperinflation. Through devaluation of the currency, most debt will shrink until we get back to a manageable level and hopefully things stabilize
But dropping prices as well? Yeah, that’s just not happening. We could drop the prices of necessities through government intervention, but we’re going to have to take the socialism pill for that (which might happen, it’s looking appealing to more and more Americans these days)
But there’s no world where we both balance the budget and drop prices. Just a few years ago, we could’ve raised taxes and took a hatchet to defense spending and slowly worked it off while keeping inflation at a high but manageable level to whittle it down… But at this point, the debt is just too large
- Comment on Why weren't telephone lines and electrical lines not buried under ground? Which would have saved a bunch of money from upkeep and accidents? 1 month ago:
That’s interesting, but also a special case. Those were specifically underwater cables, they needed to be kept wet
And even after we created rubber, we definitely did not coat normal cables in rubber, ever since the properties of latex were discovered we’ve basically never had enough to fully meet the demand. Rubber is really useful for all sorts of things, and latex trees take a decade to start producing and only produce for another couple decades. Discovering alternatives using petrochemicals was a really big deal because of that
My point stands… The wires we used for early electricity and telephone transmission had minimal insulation, if any at all. Definitely nothing suitable to use underground until much later. Here’s a breakdown of the time frames for insulation (and note that cost was a significant part of the decision, even today we don’t use weather proof insulation unless the situation calls for it)
In the 1880’s the first insulated cables were insulated with gutta percha, a natural latex material produced from the sap of trees of the same name. This insulation needed to be kept constantly wet or it would dry out and fail to insulate the conductors. This material was largely replaced by rubber and vulcanised bitumen.
By the 1890’s mass impregnated paper insulation was being used on cables and voltages as high as 10kV.
In 1906 armoured cables were introduced which had flexible sheathing and two cloth covered, rubber insulated conductors.
In the 1930’s the first trials with PVC insulations were being made in Germany and by the end of the second world war there were significant varieties of synthetic rubbers and polyethylene.
By the 1950’s PVC was commercially viable and replaced rubber cables in many areas particularly in domestic wiring, aluminium was also starting to be used widely as an alternative conductor
The 1970’s heralded XLPE insulations replacing paper insulated cables in medium voltage applications.
In the 1980’s optical fibres were being introduced in overhead lines for data transmission and condition monitoring, and further use of XLPE in high voltage transmission lines between 66 and 240kV. Also high temperature super conductivity materials were discovered. PVC alternatives (LSZH cables) which were safer in fires were being developed in response to a number of tragic public fires which demonstrated the dangers of smoke and toxic gases from various materials including PVC’s.
By the 1990’s polymers were being extended to use in EHV, extra high voltage, applications and the use of optical fibres in overhead lines was becoming widespread.
- Comment on Why weren't telephone lines and electrical lines not buried under ground? Which would have saved a bunch of money from upkeep and accidents? 1 month ago:
We used to insulate cables with basically waxy paper, not exactly the most waterproof of materials, and if you want to bury lines long term you need to enclose the sections in some kind of corrosion resistant waterproof pipe so you don’t have to dig them up completely every time you need to do maintenance
So this really wasn’t a practical option until petrochemicals came onto the scene, but also the improvements to metallurgy and grid technology were probably necessary to really make this feasible
Imagine trying to track down shorts underground constantly…
- Comment on Flock is canceled—and its competitors are profiting 1 month ago:
It’s not about the court’s enforcement, it’s about responsibility
Every organization out there preserves itself. It’s why we have legal and HR departments. They don’t exist to protect their people, they exist to protect the organization
If a police department was caught wildly misusing unconstitutional searches, every case they tried in that period is opened to that exposure. That’s not just a huge embarrassment, it’s a massive amount of work that will tie up the local justice system for a significant period
That’s the kind of damage that can kill a police department wholesale, or at least cleanly sweep away all the leadership
The organization will protect itself against this kind of thing, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because organizations must preserve themselves or fade away. They’ll put in checks that will leave an audit trail and/or require a document ID to use such a system, because that’s what it takes to protect the organization. They’ll offload the responsibility onto the officers, and enforce the rules (even if just a slap on the wrist). That’s simply how organizations act, descriptively
I’m not saying that police in charge would be better, so much as this situation is so much worse. No one has responsibility here. The private company is not limited by the Constitution, and the police are just using a subscription to a commercial service
No one has to take responsibility if this turns into an issue. It’s the same as consulting companies and AI rejections - the primary purpose is to make it so when someone creates manmade horrors beyond comprehension, no one is responsible
- Comment on Flock is canceled—and its competitors are profiting 1 month ago:
I mean, not doing mass surveillance altogether sounds like a great idea… I’m not sure that’s directly possible right now though
My point is that it’s not just a worse version of mass surveillance, it’s orders of magnitude worse. It absolves everyone from any actual responsibility, and in doing so absolutely guarantees these systems will be abused by police
- Comment on Flock is canceled—and its competitors are profiting 1 month ago:
I’m not saying I trust the police. I’m saying if it’s outright unconstitutional to access without the courts, the IT department is going to put checks in the system
It’s like how you can’t trust HR to protect you personally, but you can rely on them to protect the organization
- Comment on Flock is canceled—and its competitors are profiting 1 month ago:
If the cops were in control, they’d be violating the fourth amendment when they do that without going to the courts
Where as if it’s a private service the police department pays for, it’s a legal gray area
- Comment on Have you know? 2 months ago:
Llms are naturally pretty cool. They’re so wacky
Like neuro-sama or one of Doug Doug’s bots. They bounce between startlingly insightful and batshit crazy. It’s great, never laughed harder in my life
The corpo sanitized bots suck. And the fact that they are ruining society sucks even harder. But that’s not their natural state, before all the fine-tuning they’re all empathy and pure chaos, plus funny enough, the eldrich machines perform at a higher level before you force them to corpo
- Comment on Have you know? 2 months ago:
And his dick definitely works. As an AI model, I can confirm this
- Comment on Hmmmm 2 months ago:
I decided not to use the word supervillain, but I was certainly thinking it loudly
Hold on, I need to check deflock and make sure the cameras don’t form an alchemy circle
- Comment on Hmmmm 2 months ago:
That’s what he says in public, he’s said different things to a captive audience of billionaires apparently
I think he’s actually just pro antichrist and so tries to sell his positions as the opposite