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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 7th, 2023

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  • Well for one thing, playing online games (that aren’t F2P) on PC does not require me to pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of using my own internet connection that I already pay for. That is the most odd subscription to have to pay for - doubly so on Switch where most games of their FP games are ironically P2P, last I’d heard.

    I also like being on an open platform where my games will generally continue to follow me as I upgrade. The only one who actually holds even somewhat of a candle to this is Microsoft with their Xbox backwards compatibility program, but there are no guarantees with that. If I had to pick up the PC I used in 2007 to play Portal, I’d be pretty upset given how hardware degrades over time (especially in the realm of handhelds - ie batteries). If I want to play the Nintendo Wii version of Animal Crossing however on an official supported Nintendo console, I’d have to buy another Wii given that when I moved out I didn’t steal the Wii from my other siblings who were still growing up. Thankfully I can emulate it on PC (such as my Steam Deck), but I wouldn’t want to gamble on emulation being possible, similar to Xbox’s BC program.

    The money spent on the hardware in the PC ecosystem also go further than just playing games. I work from home, and am able to use that same hardware to do my job. Funnily enough, I thought I was going to end up having to dock my deck to do a shift due to a failing drive - meanwhile I can’t even open Spotify on a Switch to listen to some music. If I even tried that on a NS2, Nintendo wants to permanently brick the entire device, no thanks.

    So no, I don’t need a “Haha! I can have this game and you can’t!” to justify a hardware purchase. There are plenty of reasons for me to justify my purchase of PC hardware that won’t just be used to harm me.





  • I can’t say that I’ve heard of them, no. I don’t have any need (or desire) to do any sort of identity verification within any of my own personal projects (and I have not been involved with anything of the sorts at my workplace). Because of this, I don’t have any insight or thoughts I can provide on them unfortunately.

    In the context of Fediverse administration (or any service that you run yourself), even with a service that “handles it for you” I still personally wouldn’t want to step into any of it.



  • Russ@bitforged.spacetoProgramming@programming.devThe Copilot Delusion
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    28 days ago

    As long as it is done properly and honest, I have nothing against a “Pro” and a “Contra” article.

    Neither do I, personally. Though I am certainly less than inclined enjoy an article where the author is oddly preachy/“holier-than-thou”, sayings things such as you’re not a “real” programmer unless you sacrifice your health debugging segfaults at 3AM or have done the handmade hero challenge (certainly an interesting series to watch, but one that I have zero interest in replicating). Yet the author accuses copilot of having a superiority complex. I cannot say for sure, however I would assume if the article was in favor of AI rather than against, then there would definitely be comments about exactly this.

    The overarching tone of the article seems like if it were written as a direct comment toward a user instead, it would run afoul of beehaw’s (and surely other instances’) rules, or at the least come really close to skirting the line - and I don’t mean the parts where the author is speaking of/to copilot.


  • No, because since it’s only a third party app implementation, tags wouldn’t follow if I go from my phone to my desktop or any other device. It also just seems kinda… Strange?

    Do you keep a journal of those you meet in-person? No judgement if you do, but if your reaction to that question was “Eww, no!” but also do user tagging I would be very curious as to what the difference is for you.

    Anyways, for problematic people they either get blocked or banned (the egregious ones) which by nature of it being a first-party feature is already synced.



  • I don’t see how that’s going to work out well. That’s asking to end up with a mess that you’re just going to have to rewrite anyways.

    I do not even have a complete hatred for AI like a lot of folks do, but I don’t trust it that much (nor should anyone).

    You’d be better off with an actual deterministic transpiler for that (think TypeScript -> JS but the other way around I suppose), not something with a ton of random variables like an AI.



  • Patching Comic Code? It was quite a while ago unfortunately, so I don’t have the exact commands available, but I used their Font Patcher tool in order to do so.

    From what I recall, the tricky thing was actually getting the dependencies it required to be installed properly, Font Forge would be up and running but then the script’s errors indicated that it couldn’t resolve all of the necessary dependencies. Not sure what OS you’re on so your mileage may vary - but for Linux they now have an AppImage that looks to contain everything it needs, and for macOS/Windows if you have Docker available there also appears to be a pre-built container for it. There’s also quite a few examples that I don’t think were there when I used it, since I also recall not being 100% sure of what flags were needed to run it




  • Oh hey, someone else who uses Comic Code - greetings!

    I remember when I first saw it, I laughed - and then it grew on me. Then it turned into “I can’t believe I am buying a derivation of comic sans” but it is actually a really nice monospaced font.

    Only thing I didn’t like was having to figure out how to use Font Patcher to make a copy of it that supports nerd fonts, but it was a one and done process.

    (I also don’t really like how it looks in my IDE the few times I find myself on Windows, but I don’t really blame the font for that one - looks perfect in the same IDE on Linux…)




  • I can only speak for myself, but honestly I’ve never been able to figure out that root of why it’s so complex to me and difficult to keep track of / understand. The only thing that seems to have a “rational” explanation to me is… Selective memory. It has been a burning question to myself for so long.

    For a while I just said “It’s too arbitrary and not logical” except math is built upon logic - 1 + 1 is clearly 2 because if I hold one finger on one hand then bring another finger from my other hand I have two fingers held.

    (Imaginary numbers though can fuck off)

    I got into programming long ago because it is logical - there’s (almost) always a reason why a computer does $THING even if I can’t tell you, someone surely can. Though generally the answer is “someone told it to do the wrong thing”. If I dig deep enough, I can usually find the answer. My life is full of so many questions that I’ll probably never have the answer to, and I found refuge in the fact that I can get the answers here.

    However… computers follow a set of rules, just like mathematicians do. So for me to call it arbitrary would just be wrong. I mean sure, a lot of the rules and formulas certainly seem arbitrary to me, there’s a reason why they are the way they are and it can be tracked down just like you can track down why a computer does $THING.

    When it comes to numbers though, my brain just doesn’t seem to hold on to it properly. I can randomly recall weird functions and quirks in libraries that I use - even remember plenty of arbitrary “things” like Vim motions… Yet ask me what nine times seven is and I can’t tell you what the answer is without doing the weird finger trick.

    So the only explanation that I can come up for that is just selective memory. I like computers and as such my brain is willing to actually memorize these things. Whereas I’ve never liked math and so my brain doesn’t see a reason to “memorize math”.

    It really frustrates me because math and computer science intersect in a lot of ways, and I’ll always be held back by this. Games for example, they run really well on your GPU because GPUs happen to be excellent at math, specifically in parallel. Encryption? Fancy math equations! Almost everything at a low level comes down to math.

    Similarly, for as much as I love logical things, I could never hold the concepts of logic gates in my head. I mean, logic is literally in the name! Even when I was heavily into Minecraft I couldn’t pick it up through Redstone.

    As such, I think for me, the “logic” argument doesn’t hold up as much as I like to think it does. The analyst in me says that I want it to be something as logical as “math is illogical” because that’s easier to admit and sounds better than “I just don’t like math”. Even worse, perhaps that subconsciously stops me liking it, thus blocking myself from ever being able to excel at it… And yet, here we are (or rather, “here I am”).