WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
14hr ago
On the one hand, I feel for your example. I've had my own fair share that aren't to different from yours, where you wonder what fucking genius decided to put that there?!
On the other hand, comprehensible by default is quite the bold standard. I've seen people fail to intuit a single purpose machine with two buttons, one for on/off and another for mode or speed. I'm not sure a turing complete computer will ever be "comprehensible by default" to more than 10% of the population.
But back to the first hand, it can probably, at least, not be nakedly retarded and designed by the most passive aggressive engineer you can imagine, just checking off Jira issues in the laziest manner possible.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
Oh virtually every language would have caught that. Even when I compile C++ in GCC it at least generates warnings about things like that. My day job in C# lets you nowhere near the memory like that.
But aside from my excursions in assembly, C is as close to bitfucking the CPU as you are allowed to get. Half the string.h library is just nakedly wrapping x86 string instructions.
I keep trying to learn Rust, but sadly the people who teach Rust are too obnoxious for me to learn from.
"Rustacians". Go fuck yourself.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
A while ago I was noodling around in some C/SDL2 code for a game I'll never finish, as is my wont. I accidentally calloc'd space for a struct* instead of the actual struct. This resulted in me stomping all over pseudo random objects in memory, causing crashes very shortly after. I figured it out after a little bit, but that's the kind of shit that's super easy to do in C.
And I fucking love it. Segfault me harder daddy.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
When I set up a screensaver on my Win10 PC, first of all, the same screensaver from Win9X still ran flawlessly, and second, I think the config panel for it might have even been identical too?!
But random split between Settings and Control Panel, Win9X/XP style panels and... whatever they call Win8/10 style panels is jarring to say the least. It's like they couldn't, at any point, have had someone go through all that shit and just make sure it's all in one place? Go through all the built in OS panels and make sure they are the same style? It's just bizarre, and feels like there are entire teams who's jobs this should be just... not doing it.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
You left out the biggest criticism which has nothing to do with AI, at least explicitly.
The "It's my fucking computer, and it'll do what I tell it and nothing more" people. Even before Windows was to become an "agentic AI platform", it was enshittifying with ads, endless features nobody asked for that slowed your computer to a crawl, and it's proposed "Windows Recall" feature had more red flags for privacy advocates than Mamdani's victory party. Windows debloat utilities are common, popular, and at constant war with Microsoft who consistently breaks them. Right before I put Linux on my wife's computer, she was complaining that she couldn't do anything on it. Low and behold "Windows Telemetry" was pegging the CPU at 100% utilization. No fucking clue how it pulled that off.
I'm sure the fact that it's AI doesn't help MIcrosoft's case here. But if they hadn't been nakedly fucking up Windows, more people might have a wait and see approach. As it stands, most people rightly expect this push to be something that makes Windows much slower, breaks a bunch of shit, gets turned on every feature update without being asked, and just generally makes their computer much more frustrating to use. And it'll probably be somehow worse than all of that to boot.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
I saw a peak behind the curtain when a buddy of mine negotiated with his credit card to forgive his debt.
It turns out, when the CC company forgives your debt, they get to write it off, and it gets put on you as income. So, to give you an idea of how it worked out for my buddy. He lived his best life in his 20's, struggled to pay off his credit cards, got it negotiated, and had probably low 6 to mid 5 figures "forgiven". A sum of money which after 10 years of struggling with the debt, and generally making payments, probably bore no relationship to the amount he actually borrowed. He was then hit with a tax bill on that "income" so high he had to sell his jeep and cash out his 401k to pay it off.
I can only imagine how phenomenal this is for the companies bottom line, and all their shareholders. They get to generate virtually unlimited tax write offs. Every bullshit fee they ever stick you with is win/win for them. Either you pay it, or they write it off in which case you pay the government ~25% of it.
So, in a way, the tax code is the government bailing out the creditors. They get to make up an outrageous almost nonsensical amount of money you owe, forgive it, and then push the tax burden onto you adding insult to injury.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
Generally I ignore WotC. I think it was some 5-10 years ago a bunch of their higher ups said something like "We need less white dudes in this hobby" and I decided not to give money or attention to people who hate me. But a buddy of mine sent me this video reviewing a book of short adventures WotC published. His conclusion is that WotC has forgotten how to design adventures. Cool dunk bro.
But it occurs to me, a few days later, what might really be happening. Because all these adventures are criticized for being too linear, too bare bones, no room for fleshing out a world or inventive problem solving. And I think, not unlike how D&D in the 00's had MMO/Video Game envy, and aspects of it's design leaned into what they thought people wanted in MMOs and other CRPGs, I think D&D in the current era has Youtube envy and is trying to lean into what they think people want when they watch Critical Roll.
Because short, on rails adventures are perfect if all you want to do is play a session about as long as a youtube play session, and act out imitations of what you saw watching other people play D&D on youtube.
I donno, it's a theory. I have no interest in exploring the current era of D&D products to confirm it, on account of them hating me and all.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
2d ago
Sometimes I wonder if "the powers that be" have arrived at the conclusion that letting 20-40 year old women run up insane amounts of credit card debt, that they then pay the minimums on until they die on welfare, raises the GDP more than the alternatives.
At a certain point, the credit card debt is just made up money. When you pay the minimums, you pay so many multiples of what you actually borrowed it's a joke. If you default after paying back 3x the money you borrowed over 20 years, yeah, there is some opportunity cost for the banks that lent you the money, but nobody lost money in absolute terms. And hyper consuming childless 20-40 year olds probably raise the GDP a lot!
That the well dries up eventually... well... there's a new sucker born every minute. And if there aren't enough the US... well... you know my shtick already.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
I do sound like someone who's worn blackface, don't I?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
Maybe having no education in high school causes skills to decay? I wonder if these kids scored as competent in middle school math; my bet is that they did, though probably marginally, and they've simply regressed.
You know what surprises me? I don't think I've seen a woodworking video where the woodworker does their own math. I understand mathing fractional inches takes a little bit more effort than decimal cm, but it's all still powers of two. And yet, almost everybody I watch whips out a cell phone, relies on CAD software, or avoids mathing entirely by marking their workpieces against the actual dimensions of the partially completed project.
Apparently that last method is actually the best as compounding errors/imprecision always throw off your calculations. But I feel like my point remains.
Did none of these people ever learn how to do fractions? Even 10-20 years ago when our education system supposedly functioned? I doubt it. I doubt it's just students that are being cognitively mutilated.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
10 years from now, are we seeing a new sub-class of horrifically incompetent 30 year olds? If so, how does that change policy outcomes.
Infinity Indians. I'm not even joking.
I wish I could form an opinion on this, but there is simply no good data. Kids today are fucking stupid, sure, that's a data point. Is it because of screens? Is it room temperature IQ third worlders? Is it Asian cheating rings? Indian fake credentials? Decades of teachers being activist forwarding a social agenda instead of teaching the "Three R's"? All of the above? None of the above?
We'll never know, and we'll never fix it in time. The default option is to mass import workers from countries that at least fake teaching more convincingly, so that's the option that will be taken. This study won't contribute to any positive change what so ever, and will instead by another talking point behind the further ethnic cleansing of the nation.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
5d ago
In my extensive experience living among them, most federal employees are less than mid-wits, chasing good boy points in the form of the asinine federal employee leveling system. Many of them possess no other skill than jumping into meetings, filling out time sheets, and taking training courses. Every person you've ever suspected is too stupid for any productive work what so ever has a spot waiting for them in the federal government. All the most useless people I've ever been forced to work with hide behind a .gov email address. Literally every scrap of productive work is pushed off onto an endless series of contractors. And that's not even to claim all contractors are above board either. See my previous rants.
Not only do they not have any savings, but they likely have so much debt from keeping up with the Jonses that missing a months pay is what pushes them over into default.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
I said rarely, and sure enough, the vast majority of the messaging the DNC is A/B testing through proxies does not appear on that page. Do you deny that the DNC practices indirect messaging through proxies? That when certain people speak in public, despite not being the living embodiment of the DNC, they are speaking for the DNC?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
The is rarely such thing as "DNC messaging" in the manner you seem to be expecting. The DNC does not issue proclamations from heaven on DNC notarized stationary.
It's constituent members directly, and frequently indirectly, launder their talking points through proxies. If I have to defend the ultra literally, actually never happens "The DNC says", which flies in the face of everyone's understanding of how politics actually works, and what people understand it to mean in colloquial terms to say "The RNC says" or "The DNC says", then for all intents and purposes the "DNC" as you expect it to speak with one unambiguous and authoritative voice doesn't exist.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
If you want to move the goalpost past "Is a long standing and high profile member of the Democratic caucus" be my guest. At that point the DNC doesn't even exist anymore. It's like Antifa, it's just an idea.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
Sanders definitely doesn't represent the DNC.
Yeah, he just almost won the Democratic primary, twice, and was an appointee in the Biden Administration. Not a Democrat at all really.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
So what your saying is, making Trump our king to keep the government from shutting down again is just as viable a political strategy as demanding infinity dollars for special interest groups?
I exaggerate, but that's the directionality here. Republicans could have ended the shutdown by fundamentally changing how the senate conducts business. Trump even wanted them to, because then they could ram through whatever he wanted. I'm all for it! I just never thought I'd hear those same words out of someone arguing the Democrat's case about why Republicans should own the shutdown.
Glad to hear we're united in our aspirations for Trump's agenda to be completely unimpeded. Too bad Republicans didn't own the shutdown like you say they should have and done it.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
That's fascinating. So your contention is that Democrats are mad that Republicans didn't end the filibuster?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
I linked to a Democrat celebrity, who then embeds numerous Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, complain about the traitors who reopened the government.
Here it is on it's own.
https://x.com/SenSanders/status/1987718655736528939
I know the first clip was a whopping minute and 19 seconds, so it was hard to watch the entire thing. This one is even longer, a minute 39 seconds. Good luck.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
6d ago
I'm mostly experience whiplash from the DNC messaging. I wonder at the hypothetical bugman who just uncritically believes all of it. Because in the span of hours, we went from "This is a Republican shutdown" to "Who are the traitorous Democrats who caved and allowed the government to open again?"
Ah well. No helping it.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
8d ago
Define “they”.
The people who voted for Jay Jones.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
8d ago
It barely matters. The goalpost just shifts to them having been correct to do so, because the axiomatic belief is that Trump must be destroyed by any means nessecary. They are already electing officials that gloat to the opposition about wanting to see them murdered. You think they care about corrupt investigations at this point?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
I almost beat Ys Chronicles 1. Got to the final boss, decided it was bullshit I'm too damned old for, and watched the ending on youtube before I started cussing at it.
I think I just should have played the game on easy instead of normal. It has some awkward difficulty spikes that after a few tries I was able to overcome, and for 99% of the game normal felt about right. But the final boss was just too much bullshit. Constantly drops meteors on your head to dodge, they explode into more bullets turning the scenario into a bullet hell. Then whenever you hit him, he deletes the part of the boss arena you were standing on when you did it. After 10 or so hits, while dodging all around the screen, while trying to chase him down as he's bouncing all over, you tend to find yourself boxed in.
Watching the final boss fight on easy, it took few enough hits for that to not be an existential problem. But you can't switch the difficulty, so if I want to beat the game on easy, I have to start over.
I'm just too damned old for that. Alas.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
10d ago
So I read The Master Mind of Mars, the 7th story in the Barsoom/John Carter series. It was aggressively mediocre. Each of these stories has pretty boring, one dimensional characters that are either all good and honorable or all unrepentantly evil and consummate liars. The redeeming quality of Barsoom is usually at least one, single good sci-fi hook or mystery, and some slightly above average action. The hook for this one was a scientist who can swap brains in bodies. It was not his best hook, and the by the numbers "Go and save a girl" story was only complicated by the fact that the hero was trying to save her body to put her brain back in it. Would not recommend it really.
That's a bad excuse, and you should feel bad for making it.
Almost everything worth doing is a "nontrivial amount of work". If your excuse to not to do something is "it's a nontrivial amount of work", I'd question how you make it out of bed in the morning, and how often you shower.
Second, it's self evident it's not a high priority, because they haven't done that "nontrivial amount of work" in ten fucking years. The point I, and everyone else is making, is that it should be a high fucking priority.
I'm pretty sure if someone like Steve Jobs was anywhere near that team, he'd have had the least productive member of that team ritually castrated and blood eagled in front of the rest of the team after the first year where it hadn't been done. After the second year he'd have taken all their fraudulent timesheets, used a hydraulic press to form them into the shape of a cyclopean dildo that would make a bad dragon enthusiast swoon, and spitted the next person on that monstrosity.
This is work than any sane person understands needed to have been done, and done over 10 years ago before Windows 8 came out.
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