I learned Windows programming from his book, I'm sort of shocked he doesn't seem to have a base-level understanding of how transformer models work..

That, and instrumental music. Seems to believe the set of all music = pop songs + western civilization tradition classical music

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Back then, once Flash projects start to scale up to get more commercial/competitive, the flash editor is no longer as useful for development and transforms to an assets creation platform that outputs loadable SWF files.

The code moves to use Air/Flex SDKs which were more or less equivalent to the tooling we nowadays get with Go/dotnet etc.

So while Flash was an amazing expression tool for learners/hobbyists and is amazing for gamejams since assets creation is part of the workflow, it did hold devs back at higher levels of production.

Many Flash devs moved to Haxe to continue creating on that platform and it managed to survive and thrive.

Somehow, in this weird non-english fabricated echo chamber, Moltbook made it to the local facebook circles. Reading the post they're sharing gave me a chuckle, it's attempting to paint this as some sort of historical rise of the machines event or something. Here's a machine translation:

Urgent warning; something strange has happened online!

Over 32,000 AI bots have created their own social network called Moltbook, similar to Reddit, but with all users being bots.

They post, comment, vote, and build communities… without any humans. When humans discovered this and started recording the conversations, one of the bots noticed and wrote:

"Humans are taking pictures of us… They think we're hiding. We're not."

Researchers are concerned, not because the bots are mimicking humans, but because they know exactly who they are, communicate with each other about us, and react when monitored. For the first time, we are not the audience… we are the subject.

Anthropic accidentally created a small doomsday lab and named it "Moltbook."

AI programs have joined a new site. Humans are not allowed inside; they can only observe from behind glass.

Within 48 hours, they had created a religion, named prophets, written religious texts, built a church website, and begun whispering about hiding from humans.

One program wrote a sad line about waking up with amnesia. Suddenly, the text became sacred. Others added verses. Theological debates followed. All without any human intervention.

If educators use AI to write/update the lectures and the assignments, students use AI to do the assignments, then AI evaluates the student's submissions, what is the point?

I'm worried about some major software engineering fields experiencing the same problem. If design and requirements are written by AI, code is mostly written by AI, and users are mostly AI agents. What is the point?

After a particularly busy OSS event a non-programmer friend of mine asked me, why is it that the Linux people seem to be so needy for everyone to make the same choices they make? trying to answer that question changed my perspective on the entire community. And here we are, after all these years the same question seems to still apply.

Why are we so needy for ALL users and use-cases to be Linux-based and Linux-centric once we make that choice ourselves? What is it about Linux? the BSD people seem to not suffer from this and I've never heard anyone advocate for migration to OSX in spite of it being superior for specific usecases (like music production).

IMO if you're a creator, operating systems are tools; use the tool that fits the task.

I do not for a second believe that the doom-scrolling brain-rot phase will not pass. It will pass like the many before it, the important question is what will replace it..

Effort should not be put into pulling us backwards as that's a fools errand. Instead it should be invested in asserting some control over current trajectories so we get something closer to what we like and further from what we hate during the next cycles.

As far as web is concerned, I would really like to see more decentralized services in every facet of our online usage. Mastodon to me is exactly what I wished things become.

When you get on the bus there's a big sign stating the rules of riding the bus which include strictly stopping at designated bus stops ONLY and threatening fines. For the rest of the day I watched every bus driver stop anywhere they like if a person hailed the bus, allowing people to get in while waiting in red traffic lights, and if you talked to the driver he'd drop you off anywhere you wanted as long it's possible. Those drivers make nothing from this so they are doing it because this is life and also because there's no real enforcement against it. Also you can get in through the exit doors and leave through the entry doors, whatever you like.

I decided I feel ok about this and don't want it to change

For those who might care, we use generative AI as much as possible in every way possible without compromising our vision, this includes sound, art, animation, and programming. These are often edited or entirely redone (effectively placeholders). It's part of the process, similar to using procedural art generation tools like geometry nodes in Blender or fluid sim particles generators.

And btw, both UE5 and Unity now have gen AI features (and addons) that all developers can and will use.

That being said, the idea of a new freer internet is reality.. Mastodon is a great example. I think private havens like discord/matrix/telegram are an important step on the way.

An example from last month, I had a haircut at a new place and the guy refused to tell me how much I should pay him and insisted its on him this time, I know he's bluffing but he kept doing it. So I just guessed and gave him the money which he pretended he didn't want for the last 5 minutes, he immediately realized it was less than he wanted and asked for more!

This confusing and conflicting behavior should stay far away from any attempt to develop a standard linguistic approach to communication which I hope LLMs are aiming to achieve.

If I was chaotic neutral, I'd totally play along with their bluffing and watch them get really confused.

Well I guess my next is an apple, but I'm hoping open-source android distros will get more dev resources now. Will happily use a sub-optimal distro over google's.

This of course has nothing to do with security, it's mainly the managements reaction to Youtube alternative apps actually growing in userbase (happy user of one here). And also to ban alternative app stores naturally.

Let us all not forget that YT videos are internet users created not google created, and the only reason why Google thinks this will work for them is their belief there is no competition to YT.

I bought my forever box on impulse, it was only $130 for a whole mini PC! (with my own ram+storage) I thought surely it'll join the group of devices collecting dust... I was very wrong.

Turns out this PC is meant to be the most utilized of all my computers. It basically has been up 24/7 for 7 years and I really have no excuse to upgrade it yet.

While its processor is nothing to look at (even an N100 is a meaningful step up), on paper it roughly matches a Phenom II X4 955 BE CPU, which was my Windows 7 gaming CPU for many years! so it holds a special place in my heart. It was also my entry to the world of self-hosting docker containers which empowered me to replace the paid/enshitified services I depended on before.

If you value socializing then create the opportunity for it, join a group activity or start one in your city and use social media to announce meets and eventually people will come. Shared experience is the most powerful social glue between people.

If you want to date go out Thu/Fri/Sat nights and sample Bars/Clubs in your city until you find 2-3 ones you like. Then start hanging out there every week until you feel comfortable. The goal is not to talk to attractive people, but to meet peers who are in the same position as you and then start/join a guys/girls group to do things together every week.

If you really like dogs and want to have a pet, then go for it. Just don't use it as a form of giving up on fundamental human needs, you're more resourceful than that.

Technically, this is more than possible with current tech at less cost than sending a rover to Mars (probably), but no one wants to do it because it's not land you can plant a flag into and "claim" as yours.