nightsky

joined 9 months ago
[–] nightsky@awful.systems 8 points 5 months ago

Oh yeah. I recently wanted to configure something in pipewire... the idea was simple: just creating a boot-persistent audio loopback, i.e. connecting an audio input to an output. I gave up for now after looking at the config examples for that in the documentation. How can such a simple thing need such complex configuration?

As for losing configs, I've started to put all my hand-edited config files in a git repo on my NAS so at least I only have to figure out things once.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 19 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Another exciting one: Spicerr, the AI-powered spice dispenser. One could think it's satire, but apparently it can be seen at CES (article in german).

Oh and as a bonus, they seem to also go for a juicero-like business model where you should buy their spice capsules.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 17 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Maybe I was naive, but I didn't expect all this to go that fast and that blatant...

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Must be rich indeed, the disclaimer is pure gold.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 28 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Or they’ll be “AGI” — A Guy Instead.

Lol. This is perfect. Can we please adopt this everywhere.

As for the OpenAI statement... it's interesting how it starts with "We are now confident [...]" to make people think "ooh now comes the real stuff"... but then it quickly makes a sharp turn towards weasel words: "We believe that [...] we may see [...]" . I guess the idea is that the confidence from the first part is supposed to carry over to the second, while retaining a way to later say "look, we didn't promise anything for 2025". But then again, maybe I'm ascribing too much thoughtfulness here, when actually they just throw out random bullshit, just like their "AI".

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 11 points 5 months ago

Reading through announcements of new hardware from CES and the endless series of products containing "AI" is so tiring. Not suprising, but still... ugh. Claims of AI in everything.

My favourite so far: USB controller with "AI enhancements" because... uuh... if I understand it right, you could theoretically use it to connect an external GPU and use that for AI, so that's why "AI" is in the marketing for the USB controller...?

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 10 points 5 months ago

Thanks, that was infuriating to read.

Whenever techbros use the word "storytelling", some disaster follows...

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 22 points 5 months ago (7 children)

With your choice of words you are anthropomorphizing LLMs. No valid reasoning can occur when starting from a false point of origin.

Or to put it differently: to me this is similarly ridiculous as if you were arguing that bubble sort may somehow "gain new abilites" and do "horrifying things".

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 7 points 6 months ago

Not even buying things on blu-ray is safe anymore from being tainted with "AI" nightmare fuel.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

The ongoing trend of "flat UI" is largely not due to processing power though. Even inexpensive computers have CPUs and GPUs that could push very fancy graphics without problems, see what the same machines can do in game graphics (and I don't mean high-end gaming, I mean the kind of simple gaming that can run on a low-end laptop these days). Some of the early GUIs in the 1980s had "flat design" due to performance limitations, but that went away in the 1990s. Today it could still be a reason in some embedded system scenarios with simple microcontrollers, but not in a desktop or laptop computer, and also not in smartphones or tablets.

The reason we have the bland flat design is the same why we still have things like "all surfaces are ugly glossy black plastic" (luckily this one is on its way out) or "war on physical buttons" aka "touchscreens everywhere"... it's simply a design trend.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 20 points 7 months ago

Was browsing ebay, looking for some piece of older used consumer electronics. Found a listing where the description text was written like crappy ad copy. Cheap over-the-top praising the thing. But zero words about the condition of the used item, i.e. the actually important part was completely missing. And then at the end of the description it said... this description text was generated by AI.

AI slop is like mold, it really gets everywhere and ruins everything.

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I like the idea. Or maybe marking such changes in the commit message... I might try to bring that up when the time comes.

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