Mikina

Yeah, I knew about that and the imminent Gulf stream troubles, but I never saw the actuall numbers. Like, I knew it was bad, but seeing how unimaginably large the numbers are is terrifying.

Suno was what radicalized my stance on AI, and I refuse to use any of it.

As a solo hobbyist game dev who struggles with art, I had a pretty reserved approach for AI for stuff like art, animation or most notably voice acting, which makes the game a lot better but is really hard to do if you're not a native speaker or don't have a budget. My plan was to start with AI filling in places I couldn't do, but then pledge that 100% of the first sales will go towards paying an actual artist/VA and replace the assets as soon as possible. That felt like a fair compromise.

And then I tried Suno. You see, as a programmer, my line of work isn't really threatened by AI. Quite the contrary - it hinders the learning process of so many new programmer who will end up missing core skills, that it kind of increases my job security.

And since stuff like VA is something I don't really understand, I mostly considered it as an asset that AI can temporally provide.

After trying Suno, which makes something I am passionate about - I've tried and failed for the past few years to learn instruments, and starting a band and making music is one of my so far unattainable dreams, it was so, so devastating. To see something you've actively struggled with, dreamed about, and made an effort for to overcome the challenges, unsuccessfuly so far, be overtaken by a literal three word prompt, making a better song I probably ever will - it's so heartbreaking, demoralizing and awful. Which is something I haven't realized when thinking about art I was not invested into, but now, thanks to Sunk, I see how it must feel for every artist, and I refuse to support any of it. It gave me determination and motivation to make the effort towards meeting people who do VA or assets I need, and collaborating, even if it postpones everything by a long time.

Fuck AI, and fuck this guy. The product may be useful and is pretty mindblowing, but it comes at a cost of making a lot of artists demotivated and miserable. Also, saying that "music is hard, people don't want to" just adds salt to the wound, insult to the injury, and is really fucked up thing to say, after the product you've made affected and demoralized artists at large so much. Seriously, fuck that guy.

Wait what?

is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour

That's a fact I'd like to forget.

I was working at a larger cybersec company, and eventually left for a smaller indie gamedev studio, especially because even though I really tried to change it, even getting to a pseudo Red-Team Lead position (as in, I was still officially barely-not-a-junior pentester, but had responsibilities of a RT lead because I was the only one who showed initiative in trying to actually do a good job), it was quickly apparent that our job is not to deliver a good product and make the world more secure, but only to.make as much money for our investors as we can. And I really refuse to do that, since I'm still naive and wanted to do cybersec because it felt right, and its something the world desperately needs.

Even though I earn more than half of what I did, I'm way more happier because my job is a smaller startup made mostly of friends, including the CEOs, that also has amazing projects and a responsible business plan.

But, I have one enormous advantage - I'm young, I don't have my own familly, I share pretty cheap rent with my partner, so even with the smaller pay, I still comfortably earn around 1/3 more than I need. I don't regret it, working for people I respect and trust, where everything I make goes back to improving the company instead of some random venture vultures that don't give a fuck about anything other than profits. It's amazing.

But, a good alternative I've been considering is to get a cybersec job that pays well, no matter the morals, but work only 1/3 or less of days. (So, like a part time). I would still earn the same, but I won't be so bummed by the job since it's such a small time wasted, while also having 2/3 of time to do my own projects that actually fulfill me. I'd recommend this instead of working fulltime for a cause.

I usually just look into the docs, for most of the more basic things, search engine will find you the related function, and the docs usually have usage examples.

Also, learning to work with and read a documentation will be one of the best skills you can acquire as a programmer. I was so glad I was used to docs, because when I started to work with libraries that are under NDA (porting games on consoles, most prominently PS5), where the only resource you have are docs and internal forums without any kind of tutorials, being able to figure out what you need from docs is really nice skill to have.

I have tried using AI for non NDA programming questions, and usually I've ran into an issue that it simply just halucinates even on basic questions. For example, I was trying to figure out how to prevent Quest from sleeping, so we can run long-running automated tests, and all of the solutions were adb parameters that do not exist. Unless it's something super basic, AI will probably just send to you the wrong direction.

My favorite example, that made me realize how much must illness like this sucks, was this hbomberguy video about Tommy Tallarico, the guy behind Video Games Live.

There's one thing I feel isn't mentioned too much in relation to ADHD that I feel like is worth sharing, from my personal experience with it's diagnosis and trying to solve it both through medication and therapy. I'm not saying anyone else has the same situation, but it's something worth considering since the realization helped me tremendously to deal with it.

While I do probably have a mild case of ADHD, the root of the problem wasn't as much that, but a totally fucked up attention span and basically an addiction to spending time at a computer, which was literally 90% of what I did for most of my life ever since I started playing at Dreamcast when I was 4. It was what magnified the symptoms and made it so much worse, and it's something that meds won't help with. Especially for younger people who grew up with smarthphones and social networks, it may play a huge part in making their life a lot worse, and it's pretty similar to ADHD as far as symptoms are considered. Once I started dealing with this, limiting my time with instantly gratifying things, making new hobbies outside of a computer (which was insanely hard) and learning some patience, I got way better.

If you're dealing with ADHD, both diagnosed or undiagnosed, it's something worth thinking about. I'm not saying your situation is the same, or that everyone's ADHD is just bullshit and they are addicted to scrolling. Just offering my experience as a food for thought, because it's something that helped me personally and I haven't seen it mentioned too much.

I tried it like a year ago, maybe more, and it wasn't ready for that. The battery life was awfull (which was a SW issue of the OS not being able to stand-by properly), and accepting calls wasn't really reliable. It's more of a gimmick and great as a side-phone, but I wouldn't use it as a daily driver.

But the situation might've changed.

I was one of the first generations that had smartphones and social networks and accessible games (1996), and I spent most of my childhood just sitting home playing games. I was thankfully still forced to do sports, so I at least don't look like the negative nerd stereotype, but while I'm glad for it, I don't remember almost anything from them and simply suffered through so I can get back to a PC.

It has fucked up my life pretty considerably, and I've spent the last few years trying to unfuck it and do something else. But learning how to spend time in your late 20s, when literally the only thing you've ever done is sit at a computer is super hard, and everything feels like a boring waste of time, and I keep cycling between giving up and just continuing to ignore the problem, especially when something happens and I'm stressed, or alcohol that allows me to at least somehow function outside at events. Which I've done kind of succesfully, DJing and organizing events for local subculture, but I simply can't do that sober no matter how I try.

And that's after I spent almost a decade of trying hard to change it, including professional help, and my deep hatred for social networks and enshittification keeps me from at least wasting time on FB/IG/Twitter or other timesink sites, and I don't watch movies or tv shows.

I can't imagine what it must be for people used to just watch shows all day, while also being content with using TikTok and IG, and while I started playing at ~4 y.o on Dreamcast, got a phone during elementary school and Facebook during highschool, you now get toddlers playing on tablets or watching YT.

And now, we add AI to the mix, where you don't even have to formulate your sentences properly to be able to message someone, or invest effort into reading more difficult or longer texts, since you can just summ it or get an AI to write it. Generation that grows up with this as something normalized will be fucked up beyond recognition.

I can do that and more on my Pinephone running Kali Nethunter. While it's mostly a gimmick with awfull battery life, I've already used it a few times mostly in regards to wifi pentesting for my cyber-sec job, i.e when going to lunch onsite and you notice a new wifi AP you didn't see when inside the office you're working on.

And since it has an USB-C, I can simply plug in a dock with two USB-As, Ethernet, PD and HDMI, to turn it into a full-fledged Kali desktop.

I've heard that this kind of s(h)itting is (or was?) common in some Asian countries. Learned that when someone left shit all over the toilet at our company, in places where it would be basically impossible to get to unless you were sitting like this.

Tbh I'm not sure, I vaguely remember that hashes did play a role in how chatcontrol works, but I think it wasn't looking just for 1:1 match of known illegal content, but also for some signs? I remember reading that it had awfully high false-positive rate, which someone has to check. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/

According to the Swiss Federal Police, 80% of the reports they receive (usually based on the method of hashing) are criminally irrelevant. Similarly in Ireland only 20% of NCMEC reports received in 2020 were confirmed as actual “child abuse material”.