Anon likes a thing
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I’ve been online since 1995. I weep for what we lost. The web should have stayed a nerd domain. We’d have been better off as a society.
Absolutely. The biggest individual loss for me was the usenet. That was the first time google showed its true, evil and ugly face - by introducing tons of people who had no idea what the usenet was via google groups.
The second blow was when people no longer required any technical knowledge whatsoever to "go online", because ISPs sold internet access complete with a router that took care of the connection.
The third blow was when every idiot and their mom who have no idea how to operate a computer or a keyboard got access to the internet via mobile devices with touchscreens and an app for everything.
Eventually, the absolute enshittification of centralized social media (ongoing).
And now - AI slop.
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Absolutely. The biggest individual loss for me was the usenet. That was the first time google showed its true, evil and ugly face - by introducing tons of people who had no idea what the usenet was via google groups.
The second blow was when people no longer required any technical knowledge whatsoever to "go online", because ISPs sold internet access complete with a router that took care of the connection.
The third blow was when every idiot and their mom who have no idea how to operate a computer or a keyboard got access to the internet via mobile devices with touchscreens and an app for everything.
Eventually, the absolute enshittification of centralized social media (ongoing).
And now - AI slop.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Exactly. Back in 1995, my dad could never get online. Heck, he couldn’t even remotely figure out a PC. We tried to teach him some basics like ‘click with the left mouse button to open something’, but he was downright scared of the thing. He never, ever touched it.
But ‘thanks’ to the iPad, he’s e-mailing, on Facebook, on YouTube, TikTok etc. Which also has the unfortunate effect of subjecting him to boomer brainrot. He’s now more actively misinformed than he used to be because of that fucking iPad.
We’ve made the web accessible to people who shouldn’t be on it. Because it’s hurting them and hurting society as a whole.
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Ive learned a bit off a on about crypto, but never got “into it”. When I first started learning it looked like a really interesting concept with a lot of potential uses.
I can’t remember the details at this point, but when looking at bitcoin I remember seeing so many problems. There was the transaction price, speed, and complexity. There was the insanity of all the wasted energy to “mine” bitcoin. Most importantly, it didn’t make sense to me as a currency. Currency needs to be stable, easy to exchange, and easy to use to buy things. Bitcoin always seemed like a really cool prototype that needed a successor or major revisions.
Then the masses (and braindead hype bros and “visionary” corporate types) jumped on it and turned it into the shit show it is today. When people would get excited about it (“price is going up! Gotta buy now!”), it was clear they either didn’t really know what it was or were trying to hype it to get more money pumped into it. When friends or family brought it up, I’d point out that it didn’t really have any use except as speculation. I’d tell them they if they wanted to gamble, go for it, but they should realize that it doesn’t have intrinsic value (just like all the other currencies) and, as it stands, it’s a really shitty currency. Know that people aren’t buying it because it works well. People are buying it because the price is going up.
People have made a lot of money (or theoretical money if they’re still holding), but it still doesn’t seem like it actually gets used for anything but speculation. The $2+ trillion USD market cap for bitcoin makes my head spin. I’ve always thought that bitcoin was a dead end and would eventually be dethroned by something more viable, but here we still are.
I haven’t looked at cryptocurrencies in a while. Any notable progress in the last 5 or so years toward it being more than a money making gamble?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Bitcoin hasn't made much progress. There are some layers on top of it that let you send instantly and cheaply, but they are at best impractical (for lightning, of you want to be able to receive money you have to create a channel with a "server" node and them spend bitcoin which buy you liquidity to receive money. Utterly worthless)
The two I have my sights right now are monero and ltc. Both of those let you send pretty fast and with less than a cent fee
There is a tech that is called proof of stake that means that mining is waaaay more energy efficient but none of those are implementing it. I've heard it has drawbacks but I'm not sure I understand them
Also monero is mined in a way that buying GPUs or ASIC (mining specialized hardware) is not worth it. You get better results on a CPU, making mining more accessible for everyone
Both of those have confidential transactions so no one know who sends who how much money nor how much money each part has. Which is pretty cool
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There are objectively good games. There are not objectively fun games.
Half-Life 2 is objectively good, and if you say it's a bad game you're simply wrong. However if you say it's a game you do not enjoy and isn't fun for you, that's not wrong.
A game can be both good and not enjoyable to you.
Conversely, a game can also be objectively bad and yet fun for some people.
If you mean good = game works as intended and bad = buggy mess, then it can be objective sure. But gameplay, design, story, structure are all subjective. In those ways HL2 is a bad game to me, that doesn't mean it is for everyone, and no one should be offended by that.
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Exactly. Back in 1995, my dad could never get online. Heck, he couldn’t even remotely figure out a PC. We tried to teach him some basics like ‘click with the left mouse button to open something’, but he was downright scared of the thing. He never, ever touched it.
But ‘thanks’ to the iPad, he’s e-mailing, on Facebook, on YouTube, TikTok etc. Which also has the unfortunate effect of subjecting him to boomer brainrot. He’s now more actively misinformed than he used to be because of that fucking iPad.
We’ve made the web accessible to people who shouldn’t be on it. Because it’s hurting them and hurting society as a whole.
We’ve made the web accessible to people who shouldn’t be on it. Because it’s hurting them and hurting society as a whole.
Did we do that though? Or was it some hardware / software developers with no backbone to stand up to greedy corporations who wanted to make it accessible?
Other than that - yes, sadly I agree. -
Oh wait, I was thinking of fallout tactics. BOS was like wasteland skinned diablo right? That is, not turn based so not in my original grumpy old man comment.
Yeah it was the one with Ballz energy drink instead of nuka cola. I was just poking fun since isometric can sometimes include top down.
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This happens to most things I like. I really liked JoJo's Bizarre adventure when the anime was first coming out and I read all the manga and then when part 3 got super popular the fandom became completely insufferable to the point where I was stopped recommending the show or keeping up with any updates. I have also been really into AI/language models/machine image generation for years before ChatGPT exploded and now "being into AI" usually means "Exporting rational thought to a chatbot." I also feel like reddit is like this.
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Bitcoin hasn't made much progress. There are some layers on top of it that let you send instantly and cheaply, but they are at best impractical (for lightning, of you want to be able to receive money you have to create a channel with a "server" node and them spend bitcoin which buy you liquidity to receive money. Utterly worthless)
The two I have my sights right now are monero and ltc. Both of those let you send pretty fast and with less than a cent fee
There is a tech that is called proof of stake that means that mining is waaaay more energy efficient but none of those are implementing it. I've heard it has drawbacks but I'm not sure I understand them
Also monero is mined in a way that buying GPUs or ASIC (mining specialized hardware) is not worth it. You get better results on a CPU, making mining more accessible for everyone
Both of those have confidential transactions so no one know who sends who how much money nor how much money each part has. Which is pretty cool
It's called Monero, aka XMR. Typo there.
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It's called Monero, aka XMR. Typo there.
I know what i said
/s
~I'll edit now~
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Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it's an ethos
wrote last edited by [email protected]Fuck me, Dude. Nihilists?
Fun fact, I recently learned it's meant to be pronounced nee-hilism. But if you ever call it that in real life nobody will know what you're talking about.
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This happens to most things I like. I really liked JoJo's Bizarre adventure when the anime was first coming out and I read all the manga and then when part 3 got super popular the fandom became completely insufferable to the point where I was stopped recommending the show or keeping up with any updates. I have also been really into AI/language models/machine image generation for years before ChatGPT exploded and now "being into AI" usually means "Exporting rational thought to a chatbot." I also feel like reddit is like this.
Jojo's was popular for a while before I got into it. I was very confused by part 1, because none of it lined up with what I was expecting from the memes and general online discourse. It was good, I liked it. Part 2 with the Pillar Men was the thing I watched that year.
Part 3 was awful. Jotaro is the worst jojo. They did my boy Joseph dirty. Hamon is much more interesting than stands. I could not force myself to finish watching part 3.
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Alt-codes are for nerds
- 60% gang
I really think more text formatting should do as mobile devices do and just auto convert two hyphens into an em dash. Make it simple, i beg.
Hard disagree. My text is my text and I want it how I typed it. I hate how I constantly have to disable auto bullshit on every device and in every program and half the time these days there isn't even a setting for that anymore.
If I type two hyphens, it's because I wanted two hyphens.
Similarly, emoticons being converted to emojis without my consent also annoys me.
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Hard disagree. My text is my text and I want it how I typed it. I hate how I constantly have to disable auto bullshit on every device and in every program and half the time these days there isn't even a setting for that anymore.
If I type two hyphens, it's because I wanted two hyphens.
Similarly, emoticons being converted to emojis without my consent also annoys me.
Same except i have never wanted two hyphens in my life.
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Jojo's was popular for a while before I got into it. I was very confused by part 1, because none of it lined up with what I was expecting from the memes and general online discourse. It was good, I liked it. Part 2 with the Pillar Men was the thing I watched that year.
Part 3 was awful. Jotaro is the worst jojo. They did my boy Joseph dirty. Hamon is much more interesting than stands. I could not force myself to finish watching part 3.
I felt the same about Stardust Crusaders but pulled through. The second half is substantially better with E34 (D'Arby the Gambler) being my favorite episode of the show.
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I felt the same about Stardust Crusaders but pulled through. The second half is substantially better with E34 (D'Arby the Gambler) being my favorite episode of the show.
I remember that episode, was a good episode. shame that nothing that happened in it actually mattered to the overarching plot.
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Same except i have never wanted two hyphens in my life.
it's the principle of the matter.
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I just heard this name for the first time yesterday. I have no idea what it is, but I was really upset that I didn’t think of that name.
It is a good name. They're (the band, a 2 piece) a punk/rap band from the UK. Very into the social injustices and whatnot. They're in the news because the singer is apparently "anti-Semitic" for chanting "Death, death, to the IDF" at Glastonbury. Not sure if it's obvious, but I do not agree with that. Shining light on genocide does not make someone anti-Semitic.
I've listened to them for a couple years now, but am even more now to promote them. (Although listening to them more probably doesn't really do anything)
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I stayed up to date on ai and machine learning, including language models. I remember hearing that one learned math from language and wondering where things will go. I watched ai safety videos before they felt relevant. Then I heard Openai, which had a good rep at the time, is releasing their new model online, called ChatGPT. Having played with DungeonAI and NovelAI before I was gonna fiddle with this as well.
Then headlines broke, it became a phenomenon. Even then I figured this would be this week's Thing before getting bored, as was common with these ai.
Down the line I remembered hearing ChatGPT on a gas station ad for some travel app. That was when I realized this is permanent. People who aren't even online are likely hearing about this. Suddenly my niche hobby and hopeful dreams of the future became an actual enshittified crisis.
I don't think I need to explain how everyone using language models now is just god awful for everyone. And the attention hasn't gotten us closer to answering long standing questions of ethics, economic change, what is intelligence or consciousness. We've just got a bunch of the lowest common denominator shouting their answers now.
I miss when it was just goofy proof of concept s*** like seth bling teaching a neural network to play Super Mario Bros.
Or there was this site called "Thisgirldoesnotexist" with several sister sites like this cat does not exist and so on and it would pretty much just generate a headshot of a character. Extremely primitive versions of the image generation technology seen today. But now it's basically just used to s*** out copious amounts of image files with no purpose and no soul.
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Roblox. I played it as a kid around 2007 when it was just a small Lego-like building game with your friends. It's been really weird seeing it become some predatory, monetized app game that kids play on their iPad now.
For reference, I'm almost 30 and haven't played it since I was like 14. My friend's kid was playing Roblox on his tablet and asked if I "heard of this new app game called Roblox" and it hurt my soul.
It's stupid but I started playing Roblox in 2008 and I still check in on it from time to time, there are a couple of half decent games out there if you know where to look because it's pretty much just a game engine.
Between the s*** or the facilitate the worst of mobile gaming practices and playhouse to an innumerable number of pedophile rings is super f***** up. They basically trick children into developing video games and pay them scraps of what they're worth. Limited edition Hats play host to what is basically a gambling or stock market system. I think one of the worst Parts is that pretty much any transaction the company takes an enormous cut of.
I have an item that's worth 350,000 "Robux" that I bought for pennies like 10 years ago. I don't have any way of cashing that out for real money but that's still hundreds of real life dollars and also roblox would take a 30% cut if I sold it anyway.
Part of me wishes that I had actually learned to build properly in that game, for some reason i always struggled to wrap my head around scripting and actually building anything that looks decent for myself. I suppose from a certain perspective it's not too late but what would be the f****** point roblox is trashed now.
Oh yeah the chat filter is a nightmare, roblox uses a chat service called Community sift if I remember correctly and it's pretty much just makes it so that it's impossible to communicate because they can't be ours to moderate their stupid platform anymore anyway.
Also they are weirdly sexist, they enabled the publishing of user generated content and they allow some honestly pretty crazy alarming muscle bound and homoerotic masculine body shapes but any even remotely feminine shape no matter how tame and innocent is required to have these big ugly weird looking color blocks on them that look like underwear and honestly are way worse than having nothing there at all in terms of how it looks.
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Now they don't even bother with localization anymore.. which would be a good thing except now we have screens full of untranslated onscreeb Kanji that the story demands you be able to read and overly long and literal titles like "The Time I Gained The Power To Turn My Sister's Panties Into Angelic Guns By Meeting God On The Planet Golbacky While Drinking My Juice In The Hood That Tuesday Night." Which aren't even what people in Japan call the show since even in the tongue of Nippon that'd take too dang long.
Hell you're lucky if there's even a dub at all. Let alone one that hasn't been beaten to the ground by politics
As I've become more casual I just stick to dubbed anime titles. It's more likely to be something decent and avoids some of the more egregious problematic tropes of the genre.