#computer tag

[subjectsix]

KIP'S BIG POST OF THINGS TO MAKE THE INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY SUCK A LITTLE LESS

Post last updated November 23, 2024. Will continue to update!

Here are my favorite things to use to navigate technology my own way:

A refurbished iPod loaded with Rockbox OS (Rockbox is free, iPods range in price. I linked the site I got mine from. Note that iPods get finicky about syncing and the kind of cord it has— it may still charge but might not recognize the device to sync. Getting an original Apple cord sometimes helps). Rockbox has ports for other MP3 players as well.

This Windows debloater program (there are viable alternatives out there, this one works for me). It has a powershell script that give you a little UI and buttons to press, which I appreciate, as I'm still a bit shy with tech.

Firefox with the following extensions: - Consent-O-Matic (set your responses to ALL privacy/cookie pop-ups in the extension, and it will answer all pop-ups for you. I can see reasons to not use it, but I appreciate it) - Facebook Container ("contains" Meta on Facebook and Instagram pages to keep it from tracking you or getting third party cookies, since Meta is fairly egregious about it) - Redirect Amp to HTML (AMP is designed for mobile phones, this forces pages to go to their HTML version) - A WebP/AVIF image converter - uBlock Origin and uBlacklist, with the AI blacklist loaded in to kill any generative AI results from appearing in search engines or anywhere.

Handbrake for ripping DVDs— I haven’t used this in awhile as I haven’t been making video edits. I used this back when I had a Mac OS

VLC Media Player (ol’ reliable)

Unsplash & Pexels for free-to-use images

A password manager (these often are paid. I use Dashlane. There are many options, feel free to search around and ask for recs!). There is a lot that goes into cybersecurity— find the option you feel is best for you.

Things I suggest:

Understanding Royalty Free and the Creative Commons licenses

Familiarity with boolean operators for searching

Investing in a backup drive and external drive

A few good USBs, including one that has a backup of your OS on it

Adapter cables

Avoiding Fandom “wikias” (as in the brand “Fandom”) and supporting other, fan-run or supported wikis. Consider contributing if its something you find yourself passionate or joyful about.

Finding Forums for the things you like, or creating your own*

Create an email specifically for ads/shopping— use it to receive all promotional emails to keep your inbox clean. Upkeep it.

Stop putting so much of your personal information online— be willing to separate your personal online identity from your “online identity”. You don’t owe people your name, location, pronouns, diagnoses, or any of that. It’s your choice, but be discerning in what you give and why. I recommend avoiding providing your phone number to sites as much as possible.

Be intentional

Ask questions

Talk to people

Remember that you can lurk all you want

Things that are fun to check out:

BBSes-- here's a portal to access them.

Neocities

*Forums-- find some to join, or maybe host your own? The system I was most familiar with was vbulletin.

MMM.page

Things that have worked well for me but might work for you, YMMV:

Limit your app usage time on your smartphone if you’re prone to going back to them— this is a tangible way to “practice mindfulness”, a term I find frustratingly vague ansjdbdj

Things I’m looking into:

The “Pi Hole”— a raspberry pi set up to block all ads on a specific internet connection

VPNs-- this is one that was recommended to me.

How to use computers (I mean it): Resources on how to understand your machine and what you’re doing, even if your skill and knowledge level is currently 0:

This section I'll come back an add to. I know that messing with computers can be intimidating, especially if you feel out of your depth. HTML and regedits and especially things like dualbooting or linux feel impossible. So I want to put things here that explain exactly how the internet and your computer functions, and how you can learn and work with that. Yippee!

[antifataylorswift]

The developers i work with are asking chatgpt questions about my infrastructure that are in our docs. Unsurprisingly they are getting bad advice for our particular setup, and are bothering my team with a bunch of questions about if the advice is right and what would happen if they ran those commands.

[3x09x1]

⭐ Offishcial pinned post For Eel ⭐

3x09x1 / Sancho / Don Quixote

It / any prns / any neoprns + Pronouns.cc

Agender + Bigender + objectum +

Sapphic + greyasexual

I am a Minor! and gold ore is my favorite + black + neurodivergent + disabled + Dyslexia + possibly plural

My favorite numbers are 0 1 3 9 and my favorite letters is x & c :) and my favoirte symblols are + and ?

Stellular\About me + Strawpage

[antifataylorswift]

Oh, I know what's going on here. It's definitely been nerfed by its makers, and they've done it to address capacity issues as a result of high throughput. Put simply, more people are using the system than the original ChatGPT could handle.

AI and machine learning requires a lot of computational processing power (CPU/GPU) to produce results. Better results require more CPU. When you're adding capacity to software systems (adding more servers) it's more expensive to add CPU than it is to add other resources like memory or storage (disk).

Usually when you run into capacity issues, you try scaling up to handle the load. In this case you'd want to add more CPU. But at a certain point that gets prohibitively expensive, so your next option is to make adjustments to the software running in your system so that it uses less resources.

For AI software, you can make the trade-off of reducing the amount of CPU used to generate results at the expense of getting worse results.

I'm positive they needed to do that at various points — their service has been frequently on fire since it launched. (99% uptime, aka "two 9s", is actually not very good for the industry.)

obsessed with the fact humans successfully made computers to do math so now we are making computers worse at math

[keepinventory]

HEY, YOU!

DO YOU LIKE OLD COMPUTER GRAPHICS?!

did you like ANY of these photos? would you like to see HUNDREDS MORE OF THEM?! with THOUSANDS OF UNIQUE TEXTURES?! ALL FROM FUCKING DECEMBER 15TH, YEAR 2000?!

NOW YOU CAN!!!

THERE'S ALSO A BUNCH OF CLIPART FROM 1997 IN .WMF FORMAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE THAT, BUT YOU MIGHT!

STILL not convinced???? LOOK AT THE DISC THEY CAME FROM!

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!??!?!?!?!?! DON'T WAIT! GO LOOK AT THOSE JPEGS... TODAY!

[sweetbouquetartisane]

Good Will Hunting (1997) Dir. by Gus Van Sant

[kenchann]

🎤🎶.

[sinning-with-dragons]

let him go apeshit !! let him go absolutely bonkers, i say !!

[subjectsix]

I love everyone providing work arounds on the big interent complaint post, and I love that people love linux, and I am also using linux, and I understand that offering linux distros is a wonderful thing to do, AND. linux distros are not the solution. companies need to stop sucking. we need more options beyond apple, windows, and linux, because linux distros are not practical or achievable for everyone's situations, and it still doesnt solve the fact that windows and apple are continually being awful

[antifataylorswift]

possible hot take: from a technical standpoint maintenance mode is one of the best things that could happen to tumblr

no new feature development means nothing getting fucked up. you like tumblr the way it is? it's largely going to stay that way for the foreseeable future

from a business standpoint: i doubt it will be shut down, at least not for a few years. more likely automattic will try to sell it. it's got enough users, which is generally what tech companies see as valuable.

expect moderation to become more hands-off, probably worse news for appeals which isn't great, but probably will have fewer people's accounts nuked from orbit

expect fewer reliability issues for awhile (no new code, no new bugs) and then more whenever the infrastructure starts to buckle or reach scaling bottle necks. if the next few months are smooth, it'll probably be a year or more before those issues crop up

my main concern is if they realize they can't sell, they'll start cutting some of the infrastructure to reduce costs, which could go badly depending on who's working on it

it's good to have a backup plan and to know how/where to keep in touch with your friends, but IMO a lot of the panic here is overblown

I'm a "skeleton crew" infrastructure engineer. For years, my day job has been operating some ancient, convoluted software built over a decade ago by too many people who didn't know what they were doing and who didn't talk to each other, not unlike tumblr at all. I work with about a dozen engineers total. It doesn't take much to keep the lights on or to reduce operating costs without completely breaking things, even with little-to-no understanding of the underlying software.

From a technical standpoint, there's not much to worry about. The decisions made by business ghouls are a different story, but I suspect they'll keep it on life support for awhile while they try to sell it (as is tradition) because it may not have been a billion dollar loss for these corporate overlords, but they still want to make their money back.

[hellspawnmotel]

intimacy between an evil spiteful building-sized supercomputer and the lone scientist left behind after everyone else ditched and forgot about her (in which computer wants to kill scientist really bad but her programming wont let her so she just attempts to make her as miserable as possible instead, which also doesn't work because scientist is a freak)

[pippynsworld]

Happy New Years friends!

[penrose78]

[terristre]

Hello!!! Y’know when you wrote about maid day? Can you draw riddle and the others in maid outfits pleaseeeee!! 🙏

yayyyyy happy maid day anon :)

[brosif40]

MINECRAFT LIVE IS DRIVING ME WILD I'M

💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

I can't believe they're adding shaders to VANILLA MINECRAFT, they're adding it to bedrock edition first in some months !! It's called Vibrant Visuals as you can see in my screenshots

AND the next drops first feature is the Dried Ghast, which can be found near bone structures in the Soul Sand Valleys inside the Nether. It can be picked up and taken to the over world, where you can place it in water and after some time will become a Ghastling!

And when you feed it snowballs it becomes the Happy Ghast, finally a Ghast we can ride! I'm so excited for this silly guy!!!!!! It will be out when the drops snapshots start releasing

Always wanted to see baby ghasts in the game ever since the Twilight Forest mod, so I'm so happy to see it become a reality

IM SO EXCITED