Brave browser on iOS will do it. Orion probably will as well.

Newpipe has been pretty great for me on Android.

No, no, this is the communism Republicans warned us about!!1!ONE!

I don’t use them but I follow the news about them loosely. The reason for this is epistemic humility. Claude has a pretty good idea of what its capabilities are and where the ceiling is. Chatgpt has no clue what its limits are so it believes it can do everything. Basically chatgpt has a lot of info and no idea where the gaps live and Claude has a fair idea when to search or use some external function to handle something. Gemini has less than Claude but more than chatgpt. Grok has little to no epistemic humility, but it did manage to accurately portray Musk as a world champion piss drinker, something none of the others were able to do.

I say that, but it’s been a few months since I looked. That could have changed because shit moves fast. By the looks of what it’s trying to do with the timer chatgpt has less than it used to. Possibly because of the way the model is trained to be helpful and confident.

I’m wondering how much of it were the companies that spun up and never delivered (or delivered substandard products) since then. I never had to do a chargeback in my life until 2020 and I’ve been using a credit card since 1998.

I ordered a box from a clothing company. They missed my size, preferences, never called for the consultation, and sent accessories that were supposed to be specifically excluded.

They had a no returns policy. I was ok with that. But the box was entirely wrong. Exactly one item in it was the right size and style on the form I filled out.

I tried solving it through them. They wouldn’t call me back. Email was spotty. I said I was going to do a chargeback and they immediately called me to explain their no return policy means they can send me whatever they want and it’s my problem (in corporate speak). So I did a charge back with the call recording, screenshots of the styling stuff, call logs showing they never called me, everything.

Since then I’ve had roughly the same experience from a couple of other places where someone spun up a good idea with no plan, no support, and looked like they were panicking by trying to fill orders as close to the letter as they could get them hoping no one would notice. And none of them want to refund when they fuck up.

I liked dogpile back in the late 90s because it would aggregate from several sources and wasn’t terribly cluttered comparatively. I think I swapped to Google around 2000ish because it was so minimalist.

You said more than I did in my whole fucking rant. That’s exactly right.

Abso-fucking-lutely. I don’t think it’s quite there yet, it puts too many strange artifacts in the music currently, but it’s getting damn close to “good enough”.

Too many people think the danger is that it’s awful. The danger is that it’s mediocre. Because cheap, easily reproducible, and mediocre beats excellent, expensive, and messy every time because AI doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t go on a bender or get caught doing something reprehensible or burn out. It’s never late. It just sits there waiting to be told what to crank out next.

So you’ve got this thing that can’t move art forward. It can’t inject that one really fucking cool thing in there that changes everything. AI can’t hate a song it’s creating so it emphasizes things in a weird way.

Compare it with Max Martin productions. He didn’t invent manufactured music but he created a hell of a pipeline for folks to rhyme fire with desire. But even that relies on people who can sing with the timidity of youth and the confidence of a person who has been told the world is theirs. Or someone with no real understanding of a song singing it in a way that gives it a different meaning than the original intent. Or someone barely hanging on and pouring their entire person into their performance because they have nothing else.

AI can’t do any of that. It can’t turn a word into a god damned grenade. It’s going to remix everything that came before. Not in new and exciting ways. Not in thought provoking ways. But in algorithmic ways. It’s flat. The lyrics will tell a story that resolves. The rhymes will be perfect. You won’t get a banjo in metal or a calliope in video game music unless it’s a game about a clown. It’s not going to give you soul and wit. It will give you a snapshot of where music has been and is up to the point of its last training data.

I have an entire tangent about how it’s being used politically currently (go look up Danny Bones) and how it does not get tired or embroiled in controversy and being “good enough” makes it the perfect propaganda machine. But that’s for another day.

This is pretty accurate. When I came up I worked in an MSP. So I had to deal with customers. It taught me a lot about being able to say anything to people. You can break any news to anyone, it’s all in how you present it. So I gained people skills.

After I passed through that gauntlet and gained a breadth of knowledge, I went internal and gained a depth of knowledge. And I started out breaking the news in a way that I would break news to a customer.

Later after I proved my depth of knowledge I started being able to be blunt to any CIO or CTO I came across. And most of the time they’d send me reqs or tell me something was happening that required my skill set then would leave me the hell alone to handle it without kibitzing or bumping my fucking elbow.

When I started my own one man consulting shop I stopped giving shits at all. I found a good client and we have a good contract and most of the C levels like having someone on staff who just says what they’re thinking instead of sanitizing it. The CIO doesn’t necessarily like it but he’s outnumbered.

All this really only worked because I did go through a few years of soft skill hell though. Price you pay and all that. Well, price I paid for this path.

I get what you’re saying and acknowledge that that’s the best environment for some people, but for me there’s a different feel in being in your office and being on the back porch or out in the garage with the door open.

The fresh air, mild distractions on an easy day, and more natural light make me feel good. I think the beach would be a fucking nightmare for me. Same for things like a coffee shop. But if I’m in at least a semi private space and it’s not a balls to the wall day, I’ll take not being chained to the desk every time it’s practical.

I’m not racist, but I do think peanut butter is delicious.

No, but you could probably port Firefox to Holy C.

I run my own company (a one man operation) contracting technology services primarily to a single business with occasional short contracts to other businesses. My main contract has been the same company for several years. I’ve gained enough trust to say a lot of really blunt shit to C levels.

That’s the thing. A lot of them want someone to be blunt to them from time to time. If they don’t have that they become unmoored from reality.

I would follow that man into hell.

I already sent him one message this week!

Seriously though, this whole thing has me curious about the current state of things so I shot him a message asking about it. I’ll pass it along if he still needs the advice.

I’ve seen it online but it always looks like obvious interaction bait. Someone trying to get clicks and comments so they can be an influencer or similar.

My grandfather worked in NYC for over 20 years and he commuted by train. During those commutes, he sat next to the same man, twice a day - on the way there and on the way back - for years, and only once in at least a decade did they ever speak to each other. “Are you finished reading that?” Those were the 5 words that man spoke to my grandfather, who handed him the paper he had finished reading, and they never exchanged another word again. I don’t think they ever even looked at each other.

Best friend he ever had. They still never talk sometimes.

A psychopath that doesn’t want to make a habit of drinking at the house because they know it’ll become a problem but doesn’t want to interact with people because they’re going through shit? Possibly a psychopath that gets to drink for free because of the gear loan? A psychopath who wants to watch his gear and take it home with him rather than leaving it in a public place or with a group of drunk musicians overnight?

I don’t know what it is. I used to get approached semi-regularly, maybe once every few weeks when I was younger. But this dude, for whatever reason, was approached often. I think part of it is the places he was a lot of times. We’d be out at the bar (he would lend music/PA equipment to bands or small bars for a small fee and show up to basically drink for free) and there was one night I watched it happen half a dozen times. Not by the people who were borrowing equipment, but just random people who he didn’t know.

He said it never happened at like the grocery store or whatever, but very often in bars when he’d sit alone, less often in restaurants when he’d sit alone, and occasionally at the park when he’d go sit to read (headphones in). He’s good looking but not extraordinarily so and never looked especially friendly so that wasn’t it. It was both men and women, men more often but women more persistently.

Some folks just have something that makes others want to talk to them I guess. I imagine it’s worse for women for a few reasons (the way certain demographics of dudes are socialized, not knowing how a guy will react when you shut him down, etc). And some folks seem to believe that everyone is just waiting for them to strike up a conversation, even if the person they’re trying to strike it up with is obviously actively avoiding people.

It stopped happening to me. I’m not sure if I aged poorly over the pandemic or if I just look meaner these days. He moved away so I don’t get to watch that particular trainwreck anymore. I’ll have to ask him.

Story time! This isn’t here to say that dudes have it worse or just as bad or anything. It just made me think of this.

I have a good friend who wears wired earbuds often. He gets in a space where he doesn’t want to talk to anyone but he got to be out for one reason or other. I’ve watched person after person come up to him to talk. He rolls his eyes, takes out an earbud, make a huge show of pausing whatever he’s listening to while holding up the “Wait a second” finger. They’ll say whatever they’re trying to open with and he will nod and give the biggest fake smile. Then put his earbud back in. To continue the conversation they have to tap him again and wait for him to do it all over again. Some do, sometimes repeatedly.

Some people seem to have no concept that others aren’t just waiting for the chance to talk to them.

That’s because they want to put it out at the same time as the machine and frame. They’ll continue to be quiet until they secure the RAM they need or drop the other hardware due to shitty AI companies buying everything up.

There’s really not a lot to say about the controller until release.