#my sql server

[doberbutts]

Like the whole "DOOM runs on anything" meme is funny sure but technically you can run any program on any machine that has the processor, memory, and storage space for it. You may need to tweak some thing here and there to get it fully operational but really that's mostly what it hinges on.

I turned my windows netbook into a Debian server and then turned *that* into cloud-based storage I could dump and share and run any files I wanted to off my internet connection when I was in college by tying an external hard drive to it using an always-on connection. I still technically have the hard drive but I sold the netbook a long time ago. I also turned my MacBook from college into an always-on minecraft server for my college friends before Microsoft decided to give us actual multi-player support.

I also turned my MacBook into a windows OS emulator when I wanted to game because I got annoyed that Mac ports are usually poopoobad quality. So I would turn my MacBook on and then load up my windows os inside of the Mac os and then actually load the game.

Like yeah I went to school for programming but I actually learned how to do most of that as a kid because my dad had a computer that had no GUI, it was all command prompt and DOS. There are times when my current windows computers are annoying me because they won't do the thing I told them to do so I load up dos and then effectively go "I wasn't asking" at it.

[d-e-a-t-h-m-e-t-a-l]

no one ever told me how much of a fucking nightmare it is to get the dao toolset working

[komaedalovemail]

komaedas have you tried straw.page?

(i hope you don't mind if i make a big ollllle webdev post off this!)

i have never tried straw.page but it looks similar to carrd and other WYSIWYG editors (which is unappealing to me, since i know html/css/js and want full control of the code. and can't hide secrets in code comments.....)

my 2 cents as a web designer is if you're looking to learn web design or host long-term web projects, WYSIWYG editors suck doodooass. you don't learn the basics of coding, someone else does it for you! however, if you're just looking to quickly host images, links to your other social medias, write text entries/blogposts, WYSIWYG can be nice.

toyhouse, tumblr, deviantart, a lot of sites implement WYSIWYG for their post editors as well, but then you can run into issues relying on their main site features for things like the search system, user profiles, comments, etc. but it can be nice to just login to your account and host your information in one place, especially on a platform that's geared towards that specific type of information. (toyhouse is a better example of this, since you have a lot of control of how your profile/character pages look, even without a premium account) carrd can be nice if you just want to say "here's where to find me on other sites," for example. but sometimes you want a full website!

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neocities hosting

currently, i host my website on neocities, but i would say the web2.0sphere has sucked some doodooass right now and i'm fiending for something better than it. it's a static web host, e.g. you can upload text, image, audio, and client-side (mostly javascript and css) files, and html pages. for the past few years, neocities' servers have gotten slower and slower and had total blackouts with no notices about why it's happening... and i'm realizing they host a lot of crypto sites that have crypto miners that eat up a ton of server resources. i don't think they're doing anything to limit bot or crypto mining activity and regular users are taking a hit.

↑ page 1 on neocitie's most viewed sites we find this site. this site has a crypto miner on it, just so i'm not making up claims without proof here. there is also a very populated #crypto tag on neocities (has porn in it tho so be warned...).

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dynamic/server-side web hosting

$5/mo for neocities premium seems cheap until you realize... The Beautiful World of Server-side Web Hosting!

client-side AKA static web hosting (neocities, geocities) means you can upload images, audio, video, and other files that do not interact with the server where the website is hosted, like html, css, and javascript. the user reading your webpage does not send any information to the server like a username, password, their favourite colour, etc. - any variables handled by scripts like javascript will be forgotten when the page is reloaded, since there's no way to save it to the web server. server-side AKA dynamic web hosting can utilize any script like php, ruby, python, or perl, and has an SQL database to store variables like the aforementioned that would have previously had nowhere to be stored.

there are many places in 2024 you can host a website for free, including: infinityfree (i use this for my test websites :B has tons of subdomains to choose from) [unlimited sites, 5gb/unlimited storage], googiehost [1 site, 1gb/1mb storage], freehostia [5 sites/1 database, 250mb storage], freehosting [1 site, 10gb/unlimited storage]

if you want more features like extra websites, more storage, a dedicated e-mail, PHP configuration, etc, you can look into paying a lil shmoney for web hosting: there's hostinger (this is my promocode so i get. shmoney. if you. um. 🗿🗿🗿) [$2.40-3.99+/mo, 100 sites/300 databases, 100gb storage, 25k visits/mo], a2hosting [$1.75-12.99+/mo, 1 site/5 databases, 10gb/1gb storage], and cloudways [$10-11+/mo, 25gb/1gb]. i'm seeing people say to stay away from godaddy and hostgator. before you purchase a plan, look up coupons, too! (i usually renew my plan ahead of time when hostinger runs good sales/coupons LOL)

here's a big webhost comparison chart from r/HostingHostel circa jan 2024.

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domain names

most of the free website hosts will give you a subdomain like yoursite.has-a-cool-website-69.org, and usually paid hosts expect you to bring your own domain name. i got my domain on namecheap (enticing registration prices, mid renewal prices), there's also porkbun, cloudflare, namesilo, and amazon route 53. don't use godaddy or squarespace. make sure you double check the promo price vs. the actual renewal price and don't get charged $120/mo when you thought it was $4/mo during a promo, certain TLDs (endings like .com, .org, .cool, etc) cost more and have a base price (.car costs $2,300?!?). look up coupons before you purchase these as well!

namecheap and porkbun offer something called "handshake domains," DO NOT BUY THESE. 🤣🤣🤣 they're usually cheaper and offer more appealing, hyper-specific endings like .iloveu, .8888, .catgirl, .dookie, .gethigh, .♥, .❣, and .✟. I WISH WE COULD HAVE THEM but they're literally unusable. in order to access a page using a handshake domain, you need to download a handshake resolver. every time the user connects to the site, they have to provide proof of work. aside from it being incredibly wasteful, you LITERALLY cannot just type in the URL and go to your own website, you need to download a handshake resolver, meaning everyday internet users cannot access your site.

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hosting a static site on a dynamic webhost

you can host a static (html/css/js only) website on a dynamic web server without having to learn PHP and SQL! if you're coming from somewhere like neocities, the only thing you need to do is configure your website's properties. your hosting service will probably have tutorials to follow for this, and possibly already did some steps for you. you need to point the nameserver to your domain, install an SSL certificate, and connect to your site using FTP for future uploads. FTP is a faster, alternative way to upload files to your website instead of your webhost's file upload system; programs like WinSCP or FileZilla can upload using FTP for you.

if you wanna learn PHP and SQL and really get into webdev, i wrote a forum post at Mysidia Adoptables here, tho it's sorted geared at the mysidia script library itself (Mysidia Adoptables is a free virtual pet site script, tiny community. go check it out!)

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file storage & backups

a problem i have run into a lot in my past like, 20 years of internet usage (/OLD) is that a site that is free, has a small community, and maybe sounds too good/cheap to be true, has a higher chance of going under. sometimes this happens to bigger sites like tinypic, photobucket, and imageshack, but for every site like that, there's like a million of baby sites that died with people's files. host your files/websites on a well-known site, or at least back it up and expect it to go under!

i used to host my images on something called "imgjoe" during the tinypic/imageshack era, it lasted about 3 years, and i lost everything hosted on there. more recently, komaedalovemail had its webpages hosted here on tumblr, and tumblr changed its UI so custom pages don't allow javascript, which prevented any new pages from being edited/added. another test site i made a couple years ago on hostinger's site called 000webhost went under/became a part of hostinger's paid-only plans, so i had to look very quickly for a new host or i'd lose my test site.

if you're broke like me, looking into physical file storage can be expensive. anything related to computers has gone through baaaaad inflation due to crypto, which again, I Freaquing Hate, and is killing mother nature. STOP MINING CRYPTO this is gonna be you in 1 year

...um i digress. ANYWAYS, you can archive your websites, which'll save your static assets on The Internet Archive (which could use your lovely donations right now btw), and/or archive.today (also taking donations). having a webhost service with lots of storage and automatic backups can be nice if you're worried about file loss or corruption, or just don't have enough storage on your computer at home!

if you're buying physical storage, be it hard drive, solid state drive, USB stick, whatever... get an actual brand like Western Digital or Seagate and don't fall for those cheap ones on Amazon that claim to have 8,000GB for $40 or you're going to spend 13 days in windows command prompt trying to repair the disk and thenthe power is gong to go out in your shit ass neighvborhood and you have to run it tagain and then Windows 10 tryes to update and itresets the /chkdsk agin while you're awayfrom town nad you're goig to start crytypting and kts just hnot going tot br the same aever agai nikt jus not ggiog to be the saeme

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further webhosting options

there are other Advanced options when it comes to web hosting. for example, you can physically own and run your own webserver, e.g. with a computer or a raspberry pi. r/selfhosted might be a good place if you're looking into that!

if you know or are learning PHP, SQL, and other server-side languages, you can host a webserver on your computer using something like XAMPP (Apache, MariaDB, PHP, & Perl) with minimal storage space (the latest version takes up a little under 1gb on my computer rn). then, you can test your website without needing an internet connection or worrying about finding a hosting plan that can support your project until you've set everything up!

there's also many PHP frameworks which can be useful for beginners and wizards of the web alike. WordPress is one which you're no doubt familiar with for creating blog posts, and Bluehost is a decent hosting service tailored to WordPress specifically. there's full frameworks like Laravel, CakePHP, and Slim, which will usually handle security, user authentication, web routing, and database interactions that you can build off of. Laravel in particular is noob-friendly imo, and is used by a large populace, and it has many tutorials, example sites built with it, and specific app frameworks.

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addendum: storing sensitive data

if you decide to host a server-side website, you'll most likely have a login/out functionality (user authentication), and have to store things like usernames, passwords, and e-mails. PLEASE don't launch your website until you're sure your site security is up to snuff!

when trying to check if your data is hackable... It's time to get into the Mind of a Hacker. OWASP has some good cheat sheets that list some of the bigger security concerns and how to mitigate them as a site owner, and you can look up filtered security issues on the Exploit Database.

this is kind of its own topic if you're coding a PHP website from scratch; most frameworks securely store sensitive data for you already. if you're writing your own PHP framework, refer to php.net's security articles and this guide on writing an .htaccess file.

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but. i be on that phone... :(

ok one thing i see about straw.page that seems nice is that it advertises the ability to make webpages from your phone. WYSIWYG editors in general are more capable of this. i only started looking into this yesterday, but there ARE source code editor apps for mobile devices! if you have a webhosting plan, you can download/upload assets/code from your phone and whatnot and code on the go. i downloaded Runecode for iphone. it might suck ass to keep typing those brackets.... we'll see..... but sometimes you're stuck in the car and you're like damn i wanna code my site GRRRR I WANNA CODE MY SITE!!!

↑ code written in Runecode, then uploaded to Hostinger. Runecode didn't tell me i forgot a semicolon but Hostinger did... i guess you can code from your webhost's file uploader on mobile but i don't trust them since they tend not to autosave or prompt you before closing, and if the wifi dies idk what happens to your code.

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ANYWAYS! HAPPY WEBSITE BUILDING~! HOPE THIS HELPS~!~!~!

-Mod 12 @eeyes

[lazeecomet]

The Story of KLogs: What happens when an Mechanical Engineer codes

Since i no longer work at Wearhouse Automation Startup (WAS for short) and havnt for many years i feel as though i should recount the tale of the most bonkers program i ever wrote, but we need to establish some background

WAS has its HQ very far away from the big customer site and i worked as a Field Service Engineer (FSE) on site. so i learned early on that if a problem needed to be solved fast, WE had to do it. we never got many updates on what was coming down the pipeline for us or what issues were being worked on. this made us very independent

As such, we got good at reading the robot logs ourselves. it took too much time to send the logs off to HQ for analysis and get back what the problem was. we can read. now GETTING the logs is another thing.

the early robots we cut our teeth on used 2.4 gHz wifi to communicate with FSE's so dumping the logs was as simple as pushing a button in a little application and it would spit out a txt file

later on our robots were upgraded to use a 2.4 mHz xbee radio to communicate with us. which was FUCKING SLOW. and log dumping became a much more tedious process. you had to connect, go to logging mode, and then the robot would vomit all the logs in the past 2 min OR the entirety of its memory bank (only 2 options) into a terminal window. you would then save the terminal window and open it in a text editor to read them. it could take up to 5 min to dump the entire log file and if you didnt dump fast enough, the ACK messages from the control server would fill up the logs and erase the error as the memory overwrote itself.

this missing logs problem was a Big Deal for software who now weren't getting every log from every error so a NEW method of saving logs was devised: the robot would just vomit the log data in real time over a DIFFERENT radio and we would save it to a KQL server. Thanks Daddy Microsoft.

now whats KQL you may be asking. why, its Microsofts very own SQL clone! its Kusto Query Language. never mind that the system uses a SQL database for daily operations. lets use this proprietary Microsoft thing because they are paying us

so yay, problem solved. we now never miss the logs. so how do we read them if they are split up line by line in a database? why with a query of course!

select * from tbLogs where RobotUID = [64CharLongString] and timestamp > [UnixTimeCode]

if this makes no sense to you, CONGRATULATIONS! you found the problem with this setup. Most FSE's were BAD at SQL which meant they didnt read logs anymore. If you do understand what the query is, CONGRATULATIONS! you see why this is Very Stupid.

You could not search by robot name. each robot had some arbitrarily assigned 64 character long string as an identifier and the timestamps were not set to local time. so you had run a lookup query to find the right name and do some time zone math to figure out what part of the logs to read. oh yeah and you had to download KQL to view them. so now we had both SQL and KQL on our computers

NOBODY in the field like this.

But Daddy Microsoft comes to the rescue

see we didnt JUST get KQL with part of that deal. we got the entire Microsoft cloud suite. and some people (like me) had been automating emails and stuff with Power Automate

This is Microsoft Power Automate. its Microsoft's version of Scratch but it has hooks into everything Microsoft. SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, Excel, it can integrate with all of it. i had been using it to send an email once a day with a list of all the robots in maintenance.

this gave me an idea

and i checked

and Power Automate had hooks for KQL

KLogs is actually short for Kusto Logs

I did not know how to program in Power Automate but damn it anything is better then writing KQL queries. so i got to work. and about 2 months later i had a BEHEMOTH of a Power Automate program. it lagged the webpage and many times when i tried to edit something my changes wouldn't take and i would have to click in very specific ways to ensure none of my variables were getting nuked. i dont think this was the intended purpose of Power Automate but this is what it did

the KLogger would watch a list of Teams chats and when someone typed "klogs" or pasted a copy of an ERROR mesage, it would spring into action.

it extracted the robot name from the message and timestamp from teams

it would lookup the name in the database to find the 64 long string UID and the location that robot was assigned too

it would reply to the message in teams saying it found a robot name and was getting logs

it would run a KQL query for the database and get the control system logs then export then into a CSV

it would save the CSV with the a .xls extension into a folder in ShairPoint (it would make a new folder for each day and location if it didnt have one already)

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a LINK to the file in SharePoint

it would then enter a loop and scour the robot logs looking for the keyword ESTOP to find the error. (it did this because Kusto was SLOWER then the xbee radio and had up to a 10 min delay on syncing)

if it found the error, it would adjust its start and end timestamps to capture it and export the robot logs book-ended from the event by ~ 1 min. if it didnt, it would use the timestamp from when it was triggered +/- 5 min

it saved THOSE logs to SharePoint the same way as before

it would send ANOTHER message in teams with a link to the files

it would then check if the error was 1 of 3 very specific type of error with the camera. if it was it extracted the base64 jpg image saved in KQL as a byte array, do the math to convert it, and save that as a jpg in SharePoint (and link it of course)

and then it would terminate. and if it encountered an error anywhere in all of this, i had logic where it would spit back an error message in Teams as plaintext explaining what step failed and the program would close gracefully

I deployed it without asking anyone at one of the sites that was struggling. i just pointed it at their chat and turned it on. it had a bit of a rocky start (spammed chat) but man did the FSE's LOVE IT.

about 6 months later software deployed their answer to reading the logs: a webpage that acted as a nice GUI to the KQL database. much better then an CSV file

it still needed you to scroll though a big drop-down of robot names and enter a timestamp, but i noticed something. all that did was just change part of the URL and refresh the webpage

SO I MADE KLOGS 2 AND HAD IT GENERATE THE URL FOR YOU AND REPLY TO YOUR MESSAGE WITH IT. (it also still did the control server and jpg stuff). Theres a non-zero chance that klogs was still in use long after i left that job

now i dont recommend anyone use power automate like this. its clunky and weird. i had to make a variable called "Carrage Return" which was a blank text box that i pressed enter one time in because it was incapable of understanding /n or generating a new line in any capacity OTHER then this (thanks support forum).

im also sure this probably is giving the actual programmer people anxiety. imagine working at a company and then some rando you've never seen but only heard about as "the FSE whos really good at root causing stuff", in a department that does not do any coding, managed to, in their spare time, build and release and entire workflow piggybacking on your work without any oversight, code review, or permission.....and everyone liked it

[spark-hearts2]

It's been a month since chapter 3 was released, where's chapter 4?

(this is about this fanfic btw)

The good news is that I've written 10k words. The bad news is that I've only gotten a little more than half of the chapter done. That doesn't mean I don't have things written for the bottom half, it's just that it looks like bare dialog with general vibe notes. I estimate around 16k words total though, so it should come together sooner than later.

SO I want to release some fun snippets for y'all to look at. Please note that any of this is liable to change. Also, you can harass me in my inbox for updates. I love answering your questions and laughing at your misery.

Spoilers under cut.

_______

Ragatha stood up and walked over to where Caine was seated. “Can I get a list of all commands?” She asked, only a hint of nervousness in her voice.

“Certainly!” Caine says as he blasts into the air. He digs around in his tailcoat and pulls out an office style manilla folder. It visually contains a few papers, but with how thin it is there must only be a few pages inside.

Ragatha takes the folder from Caine and opens it.

“Oh boy” she says after a second of looking it over.

“I wanna see” Jax exclaimed as he hops over the row of seats.

“Hold on” Ragatha holds the folder defensively “Let’s move to the stage so everyone can take a look”

Jax hopped over the seats again while Ragatha calmly walked around. Caine watched the two curiously.

Well, Zooble wasn’t just going to sit there. They joined the other two by the edge of the stage, quickly followed by the rest of the group.

Ragatha placed the folder on the stage with a thwap. Zooble looked over to see that the pages had gone from razor thin to a massive stack when the folder was opened. On one hand, it had to contain more information than that video, but on the other…

They get close enough to read what’s on the first page.

The execution of commands via the system’s designated input terminal, C.A.I.N.E., will be referred to as the "console” in this document. The console is designed to accept any input and will generate an appropriate response, however only certain prompts will be accepted as valid instructions. The goal of this document is to list all acceptable instructions in a format that will result in the expected output. Please note that automatic moderation has been put in place in order to prevent exploitation of both the system and fellow players. If you believe that your command has been unfairly rejected, please contact support. 

By engaging in the activities described in this document, you, the undersigned, acknowledge, agree, and consent to the applicability of this agreement, notwithstanding any contradictory stipulations, assumptions, or implications which may arise from any interaction with the console. You, the constituent, agree not to participate in any form of cyber attack; including but not limited to, direct prompt injection, indirect prompt injection, SQL injection, Jailbreaking…

Ok, that was too many words.

_______

“Take this document for example. You don't need to know where it is being stored or what file type it is in order to read it."

"It may look like a bunch of free floating papers, but technically speaking, this is just a text file applied to a 3D shape." Kinger looked towards Caine. "Correct?” he asked

Caine nodded. “And a fabric simulation!”

Kinger picked up a paper and bent it. “Oh, now that is nice”

_________

"WE CAN AFFORD MORE THAN 6 TRIANGLES KINGER"

_________

"I'm too neurotypical for this" - Jax

_________

"What about the internet?" Pomni asked "Do you think that it's possible to reach it?"

Kinger: "I'm sorry, but that's seems to be impossible. I can't be 100% sure without physically looking at the guts of this place, but it doesn't look like this server has the hardware needed for wireless connections. Wired connections should be possible, but someone on the outside would need to do that... And that's just the hardware, let alone the software necessary for that kind of communication"

Pomni: "I'm sorry, but doesn't server mean internet? Like, an internet server?"

Kinger: "Yes, websites are ran off servers, but servers don't equal internet."

(This portion goes out to everyone who thought that the internet could be an actual solution. Sorry folks, but computers don't equal internet. It takes more effort to make a device that can connect to things than to make one that can't)

[warsublime]

Open Source Note Taking

I know all of you have followed me for the horny posts about sexual violence but I have decided to post some recommendations for open source tools each Friday to promote my other insidious agenda of increased privacy, security, and independence from for-profit companies.

A lot of you here probably like to journal and take notes so I decided to start with some dedicated note taking apps. Of course you can also take notes in LibreOffice and Cryptpad, but those are more general office solutions similar to Microsoft Office or Google Docs.

Freeplane

For most of my my personal note-taking right now I like to use Freeplane. It's free and open source (hence the name), runs on pretty much every desktop, and provides a solid note taking environment. Notes are represented as graphs (typically trees) which can contain cells which have arbitrary data. These cells can be manipulated with a built-in scripting language which allows you to use it like a spreadsheet in addition to using to store notes. Nodes can be folded as well, and you can make decision trees, flowcharts, etc. very easily.

The interface may look somewhat intimidating since it's not just a regular note taking app, and many users take a mind-mapping approach, but you can just imagine it as a nested tree with the nodes closer to the root being broader concepts than the leaves.

Joplin

Joplin is a markdown based tool for note taking, though it provides a WYSIWYG style editor, intra-notebook links, the ability to store templates, to-do lists, and a few more advanced features. It has an android and iOS app as well. If you want to sync your notes between devices you can self-host a server, use some sort of file sharing tool (like KDE Connect), or pay for their service.

I no longer use it (having since moved to Freeplane, KDE PIM, and SQL), but it's a good program and it might be good for your problems since everyone has different needs.

KDE PIM (KOrganiser or Merkuro)

If you use KDE already, KDE has a PIM suite which allows you to create tasks, events, and schedule things. You can use these to take journal entries which can show up in any calendar you share CalDAV info with (which means that you can link most calendar services to it). It can also be used to share when you are free if you like to schedule meetings. I personally use it for my own daily journaling and task management.

Just Plain Markdown

You can also store things in just plain old markdown files (org mode in emacs or just regular .md

files). Many people swear by this and there are some compelling benefits (near universal compatibility with any text editor as well as a very simple interface for extending it). For this you don't really need any specialized tools, just a text editor of your choosing, ideally with some highlighting for markdown. Nearly every text editor has it, so there's not much to say there.

SQL Databases

This is a niche solution, but I am going to mention it anyways since it took me years to actually try it out despite knowing SQL since no one else mentioned it. If you know SQL just using straight up SQL with a SQL database management tool is actually really good. I have done it (and do it) since for some tasks like storing recipes the added structure is actually quite useful. (and you can do complex queries on the data as well) Essentially you just break your notes into different types (possibly even thinking about how to normalize your knowledge representation, though there's a lot of bikeshedding that way) and then turn those types into tables.

Postgresql is my preferred option simply because I use it at work (and let's face it, if you use SQL you probably do to). However, if you aren't already experienced with SQL it isn't something I would recommend. Though I would recommend learning SQL to everyone, since databases have a similar set of capabilities as spreadsheets but are even more powerful and useful.

[manicpixelwench]

Hello Faye! It's so great to have you here 😄 The Missing already seems very interesting. I have a more general question. Do writers also write the coding of the story or do they hand the dialogues and multiple paths to a technical team?

Hello,

It depends on what you consider coding.

I've mentioned this in the past, I taught myself ChoiceScript during the Pandemic and used to "code" little playable stories for myself (and friends) for fun.

My personal opinion is that it's the writer's job to define the variables, plan the routes and code the branches on top of just prose. Then there's a huge, incredible, hardworking team that does all the integration, testing, translation, art and music. I think it depends on who you ask, I can't configure an SQL server, but I can make sure your love interest remembers your last conversation 😅.

If you want to give it a try......

ChoiceScript Tutorial

[fashion-foxy]

I'm not promising anything, and you know how my feelings towards something being hopeless change very frequently but this something I've been meaning to ask for a while

Again no promises this will happen I'm literally just trying gauge numbers, languages could potentially change I'm aware that I'm technically misusing the word backend but visuals are all in place and id love to recycle as much as possible of the game we have rn, don't bank on playtester being a big thing

[welowyrm]

HI I DON'T WRITE MY OWN POSTS BUT I AM HERE 2 SHILL U VNs

Play seekL, learn SQL and vc with cute hacker boi

Play Blooming Panic, get shilled into FFXIV??? and find the blossoming fan server love of your fantasies

Found them 2 days ago, got the seekLove end in seekL, blazed immediately thru the other two endings at the speed of light, had the BEST TIME, finished in. Too fast. Now I know there's a programming language based on Arnold Schwarzenegger. The characters are written realistically and I maintain that Incri lurks on 2 many subreddits.

Then meandered to Blooming Panic and hung out in Fake Discord. I love all the routes. The shenanigans are super funny. There's memes. There's onion. (Just one.) There's grandpa! Hung out with Office Dad on my lunch break!

And not only are both games VAed they're FREE.

Anyways I'm shilling go play them (and while you're at it go play hit video game Final Fantasy XIV now up to level 70 FOR FREE and hit expansion Stormblood!!)

[tototavros]

I should write up something about the history of antitrust and open source development, specifically of SQL

back in the day, back when we had antitrust and before WWII, antitrust laws were often used to go after small and medium sized businesses who would come together and build up information, e.g. about how much suppliers would charge each of them for lumber or furniture makers creating a design book so each of the partners could take advantage of each others' improvements of technique

and big business would find a sympathetic small business and make it worth their while to complain that oh poor me I'm being left out while they're colluding for profit!

on sql, part of why Oracle became such a monster was Oracle SQL server, which Oracle was very good at making sure you paid for. and Microsoft had a decent SQL package as well but it was for Microsoft Winblows

and my impression is that a bunch of big corps like Google, FB, etc. came together and decided to make sure that development of open source SQL alternatives and now everyone writes Postgres, MySql or Sqlite

which doesn't have the issues of previous antitrust cases, because since it was open source, to take advantage of brilliant but ideological contributors, there were no competitors harmed and no standing to allege a restraint of trade

interesting to think about now that the Internet has made dissemination and convening of information

[chappydev]

Future of LLMs (or, "AI", as it is improperly called)

Posted a thread on bluesky and wanted to share it and expand on it here. I'm tangentially connected to the industry as someone who has worked in game dev, but I know people who work at more enterprise focused companies like Microsoft, Oracle, etc. I'm a developer who is highly AI-critical, but I'm also aware of where it stands in the tech world and thus I think I can share my perspective. I am by no means an expert, mind you, so take it all with a grain of salt, but I think that since so many creatives and artists are on this platform, it would be of interest here. Or maybe I'm just rambling, idk.

LLM art models ("AI art") will eventually crash and burn. Even if they win their legal battles (which if they do win, it will only be at great cost), AI art is a bad word almost universally. Even more than that, the business model hemmoraghes money. Every time someone generates art, the company loses money -- it's a very high energy process, and there's simply no way to monetize it without charging like a thousand dollars per generation. It's environmentally awful, but it's also expensive, and the sheer cost will mean they won't last without somehow bringing energy costs down. Maybe this could be doable if they weren't also being sued from every angle, but they just don't have infinite money.

Companies that are investing in "ai research" to find a use for LLMs in their company will, after years of research, come up with nothing. They will blame their devs and lay them off. The devs, worth noting, aren't necessarily to blame. I know an AI developer at meta (LLM, really, because again AI is not real), and the morale of that team is at an all time low. Their entire job is explaining patiently to product managers that no, what you're asking for isn't possible, nothing you want me to make can exist, we do not need to pivot to LLMs. The product managers tell them to try anyway. They write an LLM. It is unable to do what was asked for. "Hm let's try again" the product manager says. This cannot go on forever, not even for Meta. Worst part is, the dev who was more or less trying to fight against this will get the blame, while the product manager moves on to the next thing. Think like how NFTs suddenly disappeared, but then every company moved to AI. It will be annoying and people will lose jobs, but not the people responsible.

ChatGPT will probably go away as something public facing as the OpenAI foundation continues to be mismanaged. However, while ChatGPT as something people use to like, write scripts and stuff, will become less frequent as the public facing chatGPT becomes unmaintainable, internal chatGPT based LLMs will continue to exist.

This is the only sort of LLM that actually has any real practical use case. Basically, companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Meta etc license an AI company's model, usually ChatGPT.They are given more or less a version of ChatGPT they can then customize and train on their own internal data. These internal LLMs are then used by developers and others to assist with work. Not in the "write this for me" kind of way but in the "Find me this data" kind of way, or asking it how a piece of code works. "How does X software that Oracle makes do Y function, take me to that function" and things like that. Also asking it to write SQL queries and RegExes. Everyone I talk to who uses these intrernal LLMs talks about how that's like, the biggest thign they ask it to do, lol.

This still has some ethical problems. It's bad for the enivronment, but it's not being done in some datacenter in god knows where and vampiring off of a power grid -- it's running on the existing servers of these companies. Their power costs will go up, contributing to global warming, but it's profitable and actually useful, so companies won't care and only do token things like carbon credits or whatever. Still, it will be less of an impact than now, so there's something. As for training on internal data, I personally don't find this unethical, not in the same way as training off of external data. Training a language model to understand a C++ project and then asking it for help with that project is not quite the same thing as asking a bot that has scanned all of GitHub against the consent of developers and asking it to write an entire project for me, you know? It will still sometimes hallucinate and give bad results, but nowhere near as badly as the massive, public bots do since it's so specialized.

The only one I'm actually unsure and worried about is voice acting models, aka AI voices. It gets far less pushback than AI art (it should get more, but it's not as caustic to a brand as AI art is. I have seen people willing to overlook an AI voice in a youtube video, but will have negative feelings on AI art), as the public is less educated on voice acting as a profession. This has all the same ethical problems that AI art has, but I do not know if it has the same legal problems. It seems legally unclear who owns a voice when they voice act for a company; obviously, if a third party trains on your voice from a product you worked on, that company can sue them, but can you directly? If you own the work, then yes, you definitely can, but if you did a role for Disney and Disney then trains off of that... this is morally horrible, but legally, without stricter laws and contracts, they can get away with it.

In short, AI art does not make money outside of venture capital so it will not last forever. ChatGPT's main income source is selling specialized LLMs to companies, so the public facing ChatGPT is mostly like, a showcase product. As OpenAI the company continues to deathspiral, I see the company shutting down, and new companies (with some of the same people) popping up and pivoting to exclusively catering to enterprises as an enterprise solution. LLM models will become like, idk, SQL servers or whatever. Something the general public doesn't interact with directly but is everywhere in the industry. This will still have environmental implications, but LLMs are actually good at this, and the data theft problem disappears in most cases.

Again, this is just my general feeling, based on things I've heard from people in enterprise software or working on LLMs (often not because they signed up for it, but because the company is pivoting to it so i guess I write shitty LLMs now). I think artists will eventually be safe from AI but only after immense damages, I think writers will be similarly safe, but I'm worried for voice acting.

[vaultsixtynine]

killing my old it department (ie the people who set it up years ago and no longer work here) beating them with hammers what do you MEAN the sql server you don't let me touch isn't running nightly backups on any of the critical databases. excuse me

[the-kiarah-organisation]

how does the element stuff work in you system? Feel free to answer privately or not answer at all!

Thought I'd done a post on this already, I'll assume I didn't because I'm always looking for a way to talk about this xD

An Introduction To EleWe »

EleWe is our elements and weapons system, it runs off ten elements and ten weapons - so it has a hundred possible entries - and because only one member per entry, it also runs off Phases.

Phases are a group of a hundred members, a Phase has to be completely filled before a new one opens. Phase III is actually just about to open, and we pray this does not break our database, which was only designed for the first two Phases, because we didn't think we'd exceed two hundred members. (It shouldn't, right? O-o) (I'm not bad at coding, I'm sure it won't-)

The Database »

Just a small section on the database. Our database runs by having all possible combinations as an entry, and having columns for each Phase. When searching the database, we look for things like "element in (x)" and "phase x is empty" (that's in English, I'm not going to write SQL here lmao)

Elements »

Okay so, elements. As I said, there's ten total elements, these are:

Cosmica | Dark

Sonia | Sound

Hydria | Water

Glaciera | Ice

Flora | Plants

Aria | Air

Lumina | Light

Terra (prev Eartha) | Earth

Inferna | Fire

Electria | Electricity

Each one has reactions to other elements. I used to have a list, no clue where it went (probably died when my pc corrupted), so I'll do this from memory (o-o;)

Cosmica + Lumina = Detonate

Sonia + Aria = Diffuse

Sonia + Electria = Boost

Hydria + Glaciera = Freeze

Hydria + Aria = Storm

Hydria + Flora = Grow

Hydria + Inferna = Vaporise

Hydria + Electria = Conduct

Glaciera + Aria = Blizzard

Glaciera + Inferna = Melt

Glaciera + Electria = Conduct

Flora + Terra = Sprout

Flora + Inferna = Burn

Flora + Electria = Burgeon

Aria + Inferna = Stoke

This was originally designed with The Kansukki Project in mind.

This list (with the reaction names) was only ever used in The Kansukki Project, whereas The Kīara'h Project just uses the reactions (have some random trivia)

Weapons »

As also said in the intro, there are ten weapons! These are: (listed with general classification and explanation if needed)

Axe [Short Range]

Bow [Long Range]

Crossbow [Mid Range]

Combat [Short Range] | Hand to hand combat

Gem [Mid Range] | Magic

Knife [Short Range - Long Range] | Depending on if you can throw / previously throwing knives

Polearm [Mid Range] | Death stick :)

Scythe [Mid Range]

Staff [Long Range] | Long ranged gem

Sword [Mid Range]

There were originally eight weapons but apparently we got OCDed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (more trivia)

So.. How Does It Work? (And Why?) »

Each member is assigned one element and weapon combination, usually this is based on their past. Each member can only specialise in that element.

(except if they have a copycat ability, such as Amethyst who studied more than one element and use their Sonia to mimic other's elements)

For weapons, it's a little different. Most members only have one, and although some members may know other weapons, they only specialise in one.

Mostly, these will be used within stories and headspace, however some members may be able to wield their weapons in the outside world.

Energy »

Another part of EleWe is elemental energy, it lowers by using abilities/powers and when lowering, can cause members to not be able to cast spells, or even, if it gets extremely low, can impact their body and physical/mental energy and can't recover on its own.

(I won't touch on this too much because it's more or less its own thing.)

Technical Notes »

Element reaction names source: an old post we made on The Kansukki Project's server.

If I remember correctly, this is EleWe v6, (technically v5, but I'm calling it v6, because it will be soon with Phase III)

Most of this was originally done for The Kansukki Project, not The Kīara'h Project, but it has since been adapted.

Kuro from MeD wrote this post (and is very unqualified to write this post)

Hope this answers your ask? Lol

[dollsonmain]

I'd rather have been asleep at 1:40am instead of laying there thinking about how uncertain and scared I feel right now, but I was laying there feeling uncertain and scared and realized I have no idea what people that work in offices DO.

I've only worked retail/customer service outside of the military and even while working in an office in the military, I had nothing to do.

At first I was put in one office that didn't need me so they just said "Here... Manage these files." and I was like "..... how, exactly??" and ended up retyping the labels for all of them because some were wrong and there was nothing else for me to do.

Then they gave me the personnel database. I rebuilt it and made it accessible in two days, and that was it. After that, I filled out orders for one person once. The only way I had anything to DO was by becoming the mail clerk which is another customer-facing, cyclically repetitive task that is never done and needs redone in the same way every day. After the mail was done, which took about two hours, I would leave or go sit in my office with nothing to do because the database was my whole job and it was DONE. It wouldn't need changed until the software was updated and that wouldn't be for years.

I had a once-a-week task of making a physical copy of the server which meant going into a closet, popping a tape into a machine, and waiting. I had to sit there with it. There was nothing else to do. I got in trouble for coloring in a coloring book while waiting for the backups to write and I was like "........ What am I SUPPOSED to do, then?????" "Work on the database!" "It's DONE........"

If it's SQL stuff do people sit around until the boss says "Hey, I need to know how much we spent on avocado toast this month." and then whip up a report real quick and wait for the boss to want a report on something else? What about when the boss doesn't need a report?

What do IT people do when things are working smoothly?

I can understand data entry, that would be like "Here we have all these waivers that were signed for the indoor trampoline business and these need plugged into the database manually because the online one was down so they're on paper." or something like that but what about when the online waivers do work what do they do then?

?????

It's like that episode of Seinfeld where George gets an office job but just sits there all day because he has no idea what he's supposed to be doing, no one tells him, and he eventually gets fired because he didn't do anything.

[queencryo]

Wi did a pretty good job at work today! Finally got started on a few tickets wi have been putting off for like a month, went into the server room and documented some cable traces that I needed to make the network change that was assigned to me, AND I also messed around with our data gathering tool to generate a report of a goodly portion of the switch ports in my building and what's connected to them.

Said report tool is REALLY strong, really cool!! It allows SQL-esque queries of a huge amount of tables, and link them in custom ways to build a report. Genuinely the best data-representation tool I've ever seen in a tool like this. Lansweeper is pretty good, if any of my followers on the transgender fangirl website want a network info-gathering tool.

[lunarsilkscreen]

Government OS Whitepaper

I didn't know what else to call it; maybe they'll call it "MelinWare" and then somebody will invent a scam under that name for which I will inevitably be blamed.

We have a demand for systems Government and Corporate alike that are essentially "Hack Proof". And while we cannot ensure complete unhackability...

Cuz people are smart and mischievous sometimes;

There is growing need to be as hack safe as possible at a hardware and OS level. Which would create a third computer tech sector for specialized software and hardware.

The problem is; it's not profitable from an everyday user perspective. We want to be able to use *our* devices in ways that *we* see fit.

And this has created an environment where virtually everyone is using the same three operating systems with loads of security overhead installed to simply monitor what is happening on a device.

Which is kind of wasted power and effort.

My line of thinking goes like this;

SQL databases are vulnerable to a type of hack called "SQL Injection" which basically means If you pass on any text to the server (like username and password) you can add SQL to the text to change what the database might do.

What this looks like on the backend is several algorithms working to filter the strings out to ensure nothing bad gets in there.

So what we need are Systems that are like an SQL database that doesn't have that "Injection" flaw.

And it needs to be available to the Government and Corporate environments.

However; in real-world environments; this looks like throttled bandwidth, less resources available at any one time, and a lot less freedom.

Which is what we want for our secure connections anyway.

I have the inkling suspicion that tech companies will try to convert this to a front end for their customers as well, because it's easier to maintain one code backend than it is for two.

And they want as much control over their devices and environment as possible;which is fine for some users, but not others.

So we need to figure out a way to make this a valuable endeavor. And give companies the freedom to understand how these systems work, and in ways that the government can use their own systems against them.

This would probably look like more users going to customized Linux solutions as Windows and Apple try to gobbleup government contracts.

Which honestly; I think a lot of users and start-up businesses could come up from this.

But it also has the ability to go awry in a miriad of ways.

However; I do believe I have planted a good seed with this post to inspire the kind of thinking we need to develop these systems.