Mastodawn

Today in a random large chat:

🙍 "Haha light mode users amirite?"
"I don't judge. Some people have different needs and preferences. I learned recently, for some people, text in dark mode halos really badly into unreadability"
🙍 "What do you mean 'halos'"
"Blurry auras around light-on-dark, like this example image"
🙍 "Wait that's not normal?"
"No it's a sign of a possible eye condition"
🙍 "Huh TIL. I thought that was just normal"

Seriously, throw out all your ridiculous notions of people having "Wrong" preferences and needs; you might be masking issues you yourself have and could be figuring out.

aronowski 9h ago

dmi 💽 Mar 14

judging online information quality based on site where it appeared: a comprehensive guide

- "How To (...)" in the title, cookie banners, lots of side-information written in a way that wastes your time: SEO slop, don't bother. You might as well make a wild guess, same likelyhood it'll be correct

- official docs for $x, autogenerated by a rube-goldberg machine and automagically pushed into whatever-pages by a fully-skidoodled, post-quantum CI pipeline: describes everything, except the exact fact you're looking for.

- no HTTPS, tilde in the name, DNS with 4+ dots, likely hosted on some dusty uni server, white background with absolutely no CSS: one of the best resources on the subject. you question how it's even still online

- site titled "Garry's blog", default wordpress favicon, last update either previous month or 12 years ago: golden. crystal-clear exposition, good examples and screenshots framed so well you don't even need arrows pointing places. likely used as a cheat-sheet daily by everyone in the community

aronowski 15h ago

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Distractions 17h ago

@ariadne well, as a developer who has been writing linux kernel code since back in about 2001 or so (actually I think it was something alsa/bluetooth related so probably user space at that point, but … I remember digging deep) - I don’t think it’s feasible to continue OSS without making use of gen AI in development.

Its like saying we can’t use C, everything has to be ASM.

That doesn’t mean developers don’t need to read or understand the code anymore before committing. But a hard ban? Idk.

aronowski 17h ago

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OmniRabbit 17h ago

@ariadne it's protestantism but swapping the god from the ethereal one to "reason". if you are bad you are tainted permanently and must stone; if they stopped using AI tools it would also not be enough because they are "tainted".

this pattern repeats over and over from people who unlearned one piece but didn't deprogram the religious dogmatic patterns, and you end up here.

is Linux foundation funding the destruction of jobs, removing human contributions, destroying the world with debt, any of that? of course not! but it's still dogma.

I don't have a good answer to this, just to remind people what the actual goals and actions of orgs are and hope they listen.

aronowski 1d ago

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Alex, the Hearth Fire 2d ago

@CubeRootOfTrue
"High Priest, these rituals seem tedious and pointless."
"Indeed they are. That's why we made a machine to do them for us."
"You know we could just...stop doing them, right?"
"And embarrass ourselves before God and man? What a childish thought. Now go back to tending the devotion machine."

#microfiction

aronowski 1d ago

LinkyKatsumiVT 2d ago

My partner sent me this fopie picture

#fox

aronowski 1d ago

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Wyrmlet 2d ago

Seriously though we need more software that does not assume constant internet connection. We have probably the worst internet imaginable and having a program which does not cache downloads and does not immediately install everything as soon as it's available basically makes it unusable (looking at you prism launcher)

aronowski 1d ago

Anthropy 1d ago

I think I'm just going to say it.

Fediverse has a strong negative echochamber about AI. And I get it, there are many issues I think the industry needs to address.

But there are also many many people out there, big and small, on all sorts of projects, open and closed, that are successfully using it to do good work.

I think it's time to let go of the "all or nothing" bandwagon stances on AI. To exert control we need to condemn the actual issues; https://mastodon.derg.nz/@anthropy/114975700920581718

Anthropy (@[email protected])

Dear anti-AI folk: I hear you, but, please please please, complain about lacking laws and regulations, complain about the specific things you don't like, because being "against AI" is tone deaf, it doesn't arrive and it's too generic to act upon. Whether #AI is here to stay I cannot predict, but in either case it's the boundaries we set right now that will be important for the coming decades/eons, so to actually exert control don't be against AI, be against lack of regulation and control thereof

Mastodon

aronowski 2d ago

Morten Linderud Mar 21

People are rightfully angry at age verification laws.

That doesn't justify any harassment campaigns towards *any* FOSS developers, maintainers nor contributors. Turn that anger towards something productive.

Get a grip people, holy shit.

Cat cushions go well with reading and coffee

GitHub	https://github.com/aronowski
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