I generally explain to people that the current state of technology for LLMs is that they’re larger and more complicated versions of the text prediction on your phone, you know, when it guesses what word you want to put next, but with whole sentences using the entirety of the public Internet as the base of reference for that information.

And they basically burn through kilowatts of power per inquiry.

Tech Bros drive me up the wall.

Generally they’re users with just enough information to be dangerous.

They know some things, but don’t have a knowledge deep enough to know that there are serious downsides to (insert whatever they care about this week here).

I’m pretty sure I’d be more neckbeard nerd than techbro.

Why are you describing me so well?

The number of times I’ve seen eyes glaze over after someone asked a question they shouldn’t have and didn’t want the answer to, is too damned high.

Also, sometimes, I’ll go into a ridiculous level of detail just to intellectually beat someone over the head with how much I know so they’ll stop asking questions. They seem to think they’re being clever and trying to “prove” that tech guys don’t know much more than the rest of the “tech literate”.

I’ll tell you, the amount of information in my brain from working IT support for a decade would make most people’s head spin for hours. And that’s not including the countless years of time in college, and doing personal/independent research, simply because a fancy new technology captured my ADHD hyperfocus.

I’ve gone from being a novice with a technology, discussing it with someone who seems to know a lot about the topic, to researching everything about it, and the next time I meet them, they don’t have half of the knowledge of the subject that I do by that point. It happens… A lot.

If you don’t want a lecture, and just want things to work stop asking questions, just tell me what you expect as the outcome and I’ll figure out everything in-between.

It’s excessive, I’ll give you that. I can’t really argue with your point here.

Oh, right, they’re cool.

Along with humble bundle. Those guys are cool too.

Woohoo to being responsible for others not having any fun playing a game!

Woo! Woooooo.

What?

I don’t know why you would admit this.

… Because when it comes to billionaires, gaben is the least of our concern?

Don’t get me wrong, billionaires are always bad, but not all billionaires are hated.

You won’t see Bezos doing anything that helps people, not unless it will line his pockets. Valve doesn’t charge us for using vac, they’re unlikely to sell a lot of new copies of CS2 by making it harder to cheat in the game. They have nearly zero financial reasons to bother with any of this. They did it anyways.

Yeah. Go buy hollow Knight, or schedule 1, or anything from an indie studio. Support both good devs and studios, and valve. And you even get a fun game to go with your support. Honestly, everyone wins.

… Does anyone still wonder why I boycotted all other gaming platforms other than steam?

You think you’re going to get anti-cheat this good from the likes of epic? Ha.

I was blissfully unaware, probably because I’m not cheating scum.

Couldn’t have happened to a better community of people.

Fuck cheaters.

IMO, cheating is just taking away all the fun of the game. The cheater didn’t have to get gud to be able to win, and the victim is denied any recourse or any fun in playing the game. Bluntly, I have absolutely no sympathy at all for these kinds of people. If you suck at the game and need to use cheats to win, maybe don’t fucking play it competitively?

There’s a reason I’ve kept my counterstrike antics to private games among friends and local matches against bots. I have no interest in larder boards. I just want to have fun. Dying over and over before you can even do any damage, isn’t fun.

If you’re a cheater, get wrecked.

Bravo valve. Bravo.

I just thought it was relevant to the discussion.

Not arguing whether it’s good music.

The fact that these chucklefucks worship money is my point. They put money as more important than life itself.

That’s the one I was quoting. So they’re not wrong.

Bow down before the one you serve, you’re going to get what you deserve.

I would say, they’re not necessarily good, just less bad.

Same idea though.

I didn’t say there was.

I just want this specific billionaire to continue to live because, unlike most billionaires, he’s not making my life more difficult.

He’s basically refused to let steam become enshittified. Other billionaires would have long ago succumb to the one that they serve, the almighty dollar, and done whatever they can to extract the most value from their user base. Enshittifying the platform in the process, and actively making my life worse.

So as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to billionaires, gaben is far from the worst.

I have a short list of billionaires that kinda fit into the category of: I don’t mind that they exist.

There’s a much longer list of billionaires that I’d like to see pushing up the daisies.

Not that I can, or would, do anything to make that happen. I just, wouldn’t hate it if it happened.

I think that’s the point.

They’ve had such trouble even selling YouTube premium that now they’re making it even less worthwhile, and expecting people to still buy it…

I don’t know what companies don’t get. Family means so many different things and they’re trying to dictate and control what it means to be a family. They don’t get to decide that. Many people I consider to be family, have zero blood relation to me, but they’ve stood by me like brothers and sisters when shit goes down, often staying to help long after my blood relatives, have abandoned me. The people I share a bloodline with are simply not as much of a family to me as these people I grew up with, and have stuck with me through thick and thin.

If I buy a “family” plan of anything, I expect that the family I’ve chosen can be among the people I can share that plan with. If I’m paying for a personal plan and sharing it with others, I get it, fair game. But if I’m specifically buying it because I can share it with family, then let me share it with family, or fuck the fuck off with that bullshit.

Sorry, bit of a rant, I know everyone here already knows this so I’m preaching to the choir.

Be well.

My understanding is that gaben has already put an action plan in place for when the company moves on from his leadership.

From what I’ve heard of it, the people in line behind Gabe will be upholding the same values.

We should have at least another ~40 years or more of this before sometimes entitled brat inherits the company and sells it off to a foreign interest.

With all that being said: long live gaben.

My entire extended family shares a single household and a single Internet connection. /s

This is the risk of “trusted computing” architectures. Who is governing the “trusted” part of that.

These cryptographic signatures are not as much of a death knell for Android as some would have you believe. The trick is to get a common code signing cert into your device, that is then used to sign any third party APK you want to run. You can avoid the Google tax this way. I assume that’s how most sideloading sites and apps are going to handle this.

The question is, how do you add that certificate? Is it easy and straight forward (with plenty of scary warnings), as a user? Or is it going to be a developer options deal? Or will I need root to add the cert?

I’m not sure what that answer is right now.

I just want to finish this post with a few words about trusted computing models. Plainly: Apple has been doing this for years … That’s why you download basically everything from an app store with Apple. Whether on your Mac OS device, your iPhone, iPad or whatever iDevice… Whether the devs need to sign it, or the app gets signed when it lands on the store, there’s a signature to ensure that the app hasn’t been tampered with and that Apple has given the app it’s security blessings, that it is safe to run. Microsoft and Google have both been climbing towards the same forever. Apple embedded their root of trust in their own proprietary TPM which has been included with every Mac, and iDevice for a long ass time. Google also has a TPM, the Titan security module, I believe that was introduced around pixel 3? Or 4?.. Microsoft made huge waves requiring it for Windows 11, and we all know what that discussion looks like. Apple requires a TPM (which they supply, so nobody noticed), Google has been adding a TPM and TPM functionality to their phones for years, and now Windows is the same. None of this is a bad thing. Trusted computing can eliminate much of the need for antivirus software, among other things. I digress. We’ve been going this way for a long time. Google is just more or less, doing what Apple has already done, and what Microsoft will very likely do very soon, making it a requirement. Battlefield 6 I think, was one of the first to require trusted computing on Windows and it will, for damned sure, not be the last that does. The only real hurdle here is managing what is trusted. So far, each vendor has kept the keys to their own kingdoms, but this is contrary to computing concepts. Like the Internet, it should be able to be done without needing trust from a specific provider. That’s how SSL works, that’s how the Internet works, that’s how trusted computing should work. The only thing that should be secret is the private signing keys. What Google, Apple, and Microsoft should be doing, is issuing intermediary keys that can sign code signing certs. So trusted institutions that create apps, like… Idk, valve as an example, can create a signature key for steam and sign Steam with it, so the trust goes from MS root to intermediary key for valve, to steam code signing key, and suddenly you have an app that’s trusted. Valve can then use their key to sign software on their store that may not have a coffee signing key of it’s own. This is just one example based on Windows. And above all of this, the user should be able to import a trusted code signing cert, or an intermediary cert signing cert, to their service as trusted.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

I’m actually not angry at McDonald’s implementation of their online/kiosk/self serve ordering systems. Not a fan of an AI taking my order tho.

If I’m going through the drive through, just let me talk to a fucking person. They’re standing at the window waiting to collect my payment, doing literally nothing else, just let them take the order too. It’s eliminating work and adding to the global fuckary that is “AI” for absolutely no benefit to anyone.

Unless they’re going to eliminate everyone except the person handing me the food, then fuck off with the AI slop.

10/10 times I would rather order from the app and just pick it up, except their app is shit and won’t allow you to use it until you’ve given them all of your data, signed up for an account, filled out their account recovery questionnaire so they know your mother’s maiden name, your dog’s name from grade school, your blood type, and probably what kinks you like… Just to order a fucking big Mac?

My dudes. You have over estimated your worth to me as a part of society. If the app was just, “hey, where are you?” Then “cool, this store is nearby” selects store “tell me WTF you want” orders “pay me please” Google pay/Apple pay… “Thanks, your order number is asdf1234! Go fucking get it… Also, did you want to create an account to collect rewards or some shit?” Selects no “okay, your shit is waiting for you, go pick it up”

Instead it’s… “Give us access to all your phone data and precise location” Ugh “do you have an account, you need an account” argh furiously types “thanks for signing up, did you know that we have x, y, and z deals for you? We know you like y because you searched for it earlier this week” no “GPS position is not precise enough, cannot locate a store to shop at, please enable hyper precision GPS so we know within a cunthair where exactly you are” … Some time later… “GPs location obtained, you have 8 stores ‘near’ you, most of them are pointless to show you because they’re more than twice the distance from you as the closest store, but we’re going to put those at the top to confuse you instead” picks location “what did you want to buy?” Finally orders “pay me” tries to use Google/Apple pay “something went wrong, we accept Visa, and MasterCard” puts in Visa branded debit information "something went wrong, we accept Visa and MasterCard only " finds actual visa/Mc enreta info “what’s your home address? We ‘need’ it to authorize the credit card transaction” Ugh “is your billing address the same as you home address?” Yes “what’s the expiry, and CVV on the card?” Enters info “thanks! Transaction declined because you put ‘st’ in your address and you should have used ‘Street’. Get fucked” closes app, jumps off bridge

Yay webview2!

also /s