xantronix's comments

On: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

[xantronix]

I have been waiting for quite some time for some sort of reckoning with our glut for compute resources, but for years I had optimistically assumed this would be due to physical constraints rather than artificial socioeconomic ones. Now is the most advantageous time to be a retrocomputing enthusiast as the definition of "retrocomputing" may seek to expand to engulf the whole category of home computing.

On: Welcome to Gas Town

[xantronix]

This is performance art and certain members of the audience are the punchline; I genuinely cannot conceive of any other meaning or purpose for this.

[wwweston → xantronix]

If there weren’t a repo I think it was satire.

There is a repo and I am not sure; the only way to resolve it probably is to spend some of that money he’s talking about.

On: The suck is why we're here

[xantronix]

I think the crucial difference here is that literally anybody can write without taking on years of training or a tremendous financial burden.

[stevedonovan → xantronix]

But are they writing? In that specific sense of high prestige communication? Sounds like stolen aura.

Now, code by Gen AI is straightforward in comparison. Coding is not writing poetry, even if the lines also don't reach the right margin

On: 2 in 3 Americans think AI will cause major harm to humans in the next 20 years [pdf] (2024)

[xantronix]

It's very unfortunate that, in the current moment, AI is the spear tip of one of the largest consolidations of power, at the combined annex of capital and political wealth, in recent history.

On: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

[xantronix]

I will grant you that, however, it does not take much reading-between-the-lines to understand that Rob is referring to the economic conditions and corporations that exist which allow people to develop things like AI Village.

[SpicyLemonZest → xantronix]

I agree that's what he's trying to refer to, but there just aren't any such conditions or corporations. Sending emails like this is neither a goal nor a common effect of corporate AI research, and a similar email (it's not exactly well written!) could easily have been generated on consumer hardware using open source models. It's like seeing someone pass out dumb flyers and cursing at Xerox for building photocopiers - he's mad at the wrong people because he's diagnosed a systemic issue that doesn't exist.

On: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

[xantronix]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's correct. Just whipped this up, using the WGS-84 datum.

  (use-modules (geo vincenty))
  
  (let walk ((p '(0 0 180))
             (i 0))
    (cond ((= i 3)
           (display p)
           (newline))
          (else
            (walk (apply vincenty
                         (list (car p) (cadr p) (+ 90 (caddr p)) 10000000))
                  (+ i 1)))))

Running this yields:

  (0.01777744062090717 0.16837322410251268 179.98234155229127)

Surely the discrepancy is down to spheroid vs sphere, yeah?

On: An exposed .git folder let us dox a phishing campaign

[xantronix]

The URL you see in that fourth screenshot in the Imgur post is from using `git clone` on the the same URL, which was issued on GitHub.

[CGamesPlay → xantronix]

How do you get Github to issue such URLs? No repository lists URLs in that format on Github for me.

On: Designing a Language (2017)

[xantronix]

This sentiment seems short-sighted and to express an unqualified value judgement. Furthermore, this seems like a presupposition that once a popular language is implemented, new idioms and features are not implemented from elsewhere as ecosystems elsewhere proliferate and prosper.

That said, I think it's okay, really, to allow people to think they are working on the next definitive thing; not because they are actually solving the "problem" of fragmentation once and for all, but rather bringing to bear the passion to see an idea to fruition. New concepts and approaches should not be considered to be inherently counterproductive or dangerous.

On: I'm making a small RPG and I need feeback regarding performance

[xantronix]

Related to the initial poor performance of Electron on macOS Tahoe?

https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/48311

[ceigey → xantronix]

That was my gut feeling too, or at least something Tahoe related. I reckon they’re using Gemshell based on the game icon, which they’ve also been talking about on their YouTube channel.

On Gemshell’s store page (https://l0om.itch.io/gemshell) it seems they’re in turn using Neutralino JS, which should be using a Webview, like Tauri.

On: Does anyone remember websites?

[xantronix]

openssl s_client -connect host:port