ThePowerOfGeek

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.)

It’s the ExpertSexchange of the 2020s!

Was gonna say… my kids keep accidentally using my profile to watch their videos. YouTube is going to think I’m a teen/child with peak gen alpha brain rot.

I put my IMEI in and it said I was eligible. But then it gets stuck in an infinite loop of support links with no option out (at least when I selected to get a replacement battery). Edit: I got free of the loop, but the nearest place to take my phone into to get the battery replaced is 100 miles away!

I think I’m just going to get a new phone and move on. Not a Pixel though. Fuck this noise. My wife had a Pixel 5a and the motherboard fried itself after a couple of years. Google sent her a Pixel 6a replacement about 2 months later (long after we’d found her a non-Pixel replacement). So I upgraded to that replacement for in a 4a. But now this battery/fire bullshit? I’m done with their shitty products and their shitty support!

Thanks for the link. I put my phone’s info in and it told me I’m eligible. But the color of the phone was completely wrong.

I’m done with Pixels. The first one was amazing. But the quality has been going gradually downhill for both the main series and the A series phones.

I came so close to switching over to them at the start of the year. I was in the middle of planning that change, then their founder or CEO or whoever he is started going political. So I held off. And now just like everyone else they’ve jumped on the AI bandwagon.

That’s a good point. And to add to it, I’ve tried using Briar as an emergency option if there’s no Internet. And there seems to be a massive flaw in that scenario: you need the Internet to authenticate yourself on the app. So if there’s no Internet it’s useless. I just tried switching off WiFi and 5G on my phone and yup, can’t log in, so can’t use it.

The interesting thing for me is that Grok was originally pretty ‘woke’ itself. Then Musk lobotomized it and turned it into a Nazi.

100% agree about boycotting everything that toxic nepo-baby asshole touches. Tesla, Twitter, Space X, whatever.

I just went into my settings after reading this article (and getting a bit frustrated that it was a wall of text with no clear instructions right up front).

I did a search in settings for “gemini” and found the Gemini settings. There’s no clear ‘off’ switch. But there’s is an option to switch back to Google Assistant. So I did that. And not when I search for Gemini in settings it urges me to enable Gemini.

I’m taking that as a good sign that I’ve disabled it permanently. Thought I’d post this info in case it helps someone else. Or so if I’m incorrect somebody else can correct me.

This is a great idea, but it would be difficult to manage.

It reminds me of the instant messenger wars during the late 1990s/early 2000s.

AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) had a virtual monopoly on the industry, and so when Microsoft started breaking into it with MSN Messenger they cracked AIM’s protocol so their users could communicate with AIM users. This enraged AOL, and there was a wild cat-and-mouse updates battle for a few months. AOL would push an update to block Microsoft, then Microsoft would push an update to get around that. Sometimes there were multiple updates from both sides per day.

And then there was Trillian messenger just sneaking through the middle providing access to both, mostly unnoticed (at least for a while).

Okay. But one of my points still stands that there are already a bunch of p2p Bluetooth-based messaging apps out there.

Oh great, yet another secure messaging app.

Getting people to move off Messenger or even WhatsApp is tricky enough already for to interview and resistance to change. But even when you can coax them to move, you then often end up in a debate about where to move to. Signal, Briar, Viber, whatever proprietary thing Apple is currently pushing, or the thousands of other options/apps. I guess we can just add this one to that long list.

I try to use local stores or other websites, and only use Amazon if I can’t find what I need there. But at least half the time I end up having to use Amazon because I can’t find what I need.

It’s probably a kind of vicious cycle: as Amazon eats further into profits of other companies they are more limited in what they can offer.

With tungsten cubes apparently. Lots and lots of tungsten cubes!

I fucking loath LinkedIn! I don’t go on there much, but every time I do it’s 99% shameless self-promotion using vapid, one-dimensional content that’s wrapped in a thin veneer of motivational speech bullshit.

How do many people can’t see through it (let alone tolerate it) is beyond me. LinkedIn embodies so much of what’s wrong with modern society.