People would say that coding is about thinking through customer needs and how to imbue that into code. Experience tells me that there's some of that, but actually there's far more of trying to get the indirect dependencies to stop fighting each other.

I wish I could quit being a software developer so that I could enjoy making software again.

I want the world where the technology isn't turned against me and maybe turns against the Epstein class instead. Like, an obituary where Elon Musk was eaten by his toaster for breakfast, that's the future I want.

Last year the Trump admin was all about "Flood the Zone" but the US hawks getting everything on their wishlist, rush to AI, steps toward locking down OSes, steps toward locking down 3D printers, pushes for more surveillance, white collar layoffs exacerbating xenophobia ... everything ... too much.

In Star Trek it's clear that technologically, you could replicate yourself whole and alive and it happens with transporter accidents, but even in dire situations no group exploits this possibility except that one space station in _Star Trek: Enterprise_ that hadn't mastered the alive part yet.

I feel like there has to be some way to merge the classic over 9,000 meme with the Pam Bondi over 50,000 meme.

I'm still fuming about the HOA thinking #flock surveillance cameras are a good idea. I keep having to write down the many ways in which it is a bad idea.

Apparently the HOA wants to put in Flock cameras. WTF! I don't want that even if I weren't paying for it.

I decided to save a webpage from the view-source page on Firefox and rather than saving the page I was viewing the source of, it saved the view source page itself. I'm a little stumped on whether that is behavior that makes sense, but it made me laugh once I realized it.

I'm in the process of making and rebuilding a few 3D printers and I keep having the idea that since it's custom, any non-functional piece could have embellishments added until the printer itself is an art piece. I keep imagining a printer that looks like baroque furniture or a gothic cathedral.

*Looks at state legislatures presently moving to mandate locked down tech* "Why do you guys hate freedom?"

RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116145194552591221 It's clearly a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but whatever. In the process we get to have more sound bites of the Trump admin claiming that pushing back against domestic mass surveillance undermines democratic values.

The product description says all metal hotend. The PTFE tube goes all the way to the top of the nozzle. That's false advertising. The description even claims to support high temperature filament, but the continual clogging when I attempt to print ABS proves otherwise. #3dprinting

Has anyone taken LG's WebOS, which is nominally open source, and used it to down convert old LG smart TVs to being dumb TVs? My TV has been really unreliable and I really suspect that the issue is too much software on bottom of the barrel hardware.

[US Politics, oligarchs] The reason we're seeing so many ruling class people publicly come out as Christian evangelicals while demonstrably not living any of the values is the same reason that Saudi princes pay lip service to Islam while breaking that religion's rules at every opportunity.

[AI, Not even skepticism] A very basic thing I have to look at is that if you accept the claims of AI _democratizing_ software creation, art, and writing, you have to reckon with the fact that continued access and usage (in most cases) is controlled authoritarianly.

Worth repeating: Claims of "AI" democratizing anything (coding, creative endeavors, etc) are always BS. The thing locking out people from doing that is not having the time/resources. You want to democratize coding/art/creativity? Give people paid time off to do it and access to infrastructure […]

With 3D Printing it is very often the little things that are giving you trouble, but sometimes it's the big, obvious things that you've just somehow missed, like a whole bearing sliding out. That is today for me and it's a miracle that the prints have been succeeding at all given that.

It's actually very funny that a thirst trap account followed my bridgy account on Bluesky that bridges this Mastodon account. Doing so clearly and obviously does nothing.

We're not going to convince the corporations who sign huge B2B contracts with Anthropic, Google, et al to use lighter local models that don't exacerbate climate change. You'll be lucky to talk your casual AI using mom to use a local model. When talking about AI, local models don't matter right now.

[AI] It's absolutely wild that they're seeing cases of AI induced psychosis at the same time they're trying to setup AI therapists.

"Tech has become all Jobs and no Woz." great line @ianbetteridge ! https://www.ianbetteridge.com/founder-mode-hackers-and-being-bored-by-tech/

Is everyone else getting weird spam talking about personal loans from weird phone numbers? The phone system has really bad issues and the anti-spam catches messages from my kid's school that I need to hear while letting through obvious scams.

It would be very funny if all these oligarchs just took a trip to the middle of Greenland in Winter and just liked it so much they never came back or felt the need to call home.

I'd really like to know who is behind the push to force #3dprinting designs to be checked against some database before they're allowed to be printed. It hasn't come to _my_ state yet, but bad, moral panic based legislature spreads like a disease.

I went down the rabbit hole of "how are pokéballs attached to a belt in the show and the games?" so I could improve cosplay. I think the answer is effectively _vibes_ and canonically in the case of female swimmers _a woman's secret_. For cosplay the right answer is likely just velcro.

[Food] I was roped into making pancakes by kiddos again. It varies off of this recipe but with many substitutions. 1.5 cup floor 2 tbsp baking powder 4 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp salt 6 tbsp oil Enough oat milk to reach thick batter Enough water to reach a thin […] [Original post on urusai.social]

I feel like I should talk about there being a US Space Force booth at a small, first year Pokémon convention in Richmond, a small to mid-size city. It's weird.

what happened to that Fediverse statement where people in short said "Discord is not documentation!"? I feel like it's relevant to say that once again as Discord ups their panopticon game.

Spring starts in a few weeks. I should get back to gardening this year. I had a year or two where I was well setup with tomatoes, kale, and herbs, but it's kind of grown over since then. I have a few months before the last frost, so I have time to read up a bit.

The unbearably cold weather has finally subsided, so I can finally gk back in the garage and fix my 3D printers. But now I've been mildly sick for a week and I just want that to end.

I traded in Dragon Quest V at #estarland today and got Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu, Super Mario Odyssey, and Dragon Quest Treasures. With Dragon Quest V being $15 on Android and my not being a Nintendo DS game collector, that seems like a great deal.

I headed to northern Virginia today and folks lined US-1 for the Buddhist Walk or Peace. So, folks are definitely in support for that up here. #virginia

I'm in my Team Rocket cosplay at Richmond PokeKon-Fest today and I realized I've actually Ship of Theseus'ed this cosplay over a decade.

On the one hand, I kind of chafe at the idea of considering LLMs an execution architecture, so I really don't like the explanation of AI agents being insecure because the data is indistinguishable from commands.

[Food] Whatever is in oat milk makes for really fluffy pancakes. And now I have too many pancakes because a kiddo wanted two and wouldn't take no for an answer.

I want to make a variant of that bike meme where the biker puts a stick in another biker's spokes before putting the stick in his own spokes and end it with "this is Foucault's Boomerang's fault."

[uspol] When Trump goes, I think it may _look_ like we voted our way out of it, but only because on the ground opposition makes it clear that people on the ground will throw him out or people in fact _do_ chase him out after either an electoral loss or an impeachment and removal trial.

The 8-Bit Big Band wins second Grammy for their latest Super Mario music medley: https://gonintendo.com/contents/57260-the-8-bit-big-band-wins-second-grammy-for-their-latest-super-mario-music-medley Can they make it a hat trick? #mario #supermario

[Talking about food] At a very basic level it bothers me that I have had very good vegan food at Food Not Bombs, from Mediterranean restaurants, and from Indian restaurants, but I've never had vegan food from an explicitly vegan restaurant that I have liked. What's with that?

It's so dang cold. Doge did not know what they were bringing down upon us when they fired the secret society of meteorologists at NOAA who control the weather.

RE: https://urusai.social/@matt5sean3/115924544263230412 I later attempted this and the answer is. Sometimes the air is basically fine. Other times you're in the absolute red zone of air quality for several minutes. Without an air quality meter you won't know when you're in which.

RE: https://localization.cafe/@aran/115989969554299464 Around the 37 minute mark, the idea of replacing all ethanol corn production with grid solar resulting in more power than is currently on the US grid is wild.

The bills going after 3D printed guns are primarily in response to a health insurance CEO being killed for systematically causing death and suffering. This proves politicians would rather performatively hamstring technology than fix death and suffering from our health insurance system. #uspol

I read through the _Cooking with Wild Game_ #manga on #crunchyroll Manga and my advice to anyone else is, don't. The writing consistently doesn't make sense and tends to just stop caring about things that are previously major points for no reason. The artwork isn't anything exceptional.

The old man part of me is happy seeing goon in its pre-COVID usage. All other parts of me just wish the goons would go home and be permanently barred from all public offices and wealth in excess of a modest house and a modest pension.

[uspol] *Looks online* Oh, the national level of the Democratic Party is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Against fascists. Again. #uspol

I want to 3D print things, but the nozzle on the printer is clogged and the printer is in the garage and the garage is unreasonably fucking cold.

[uspol] Today, I feel like I _will_ outlive this corrupt regime. There's a major part of me that wonders what will happen next. Will we have more milquetoast liberals unwilling to solve the problems that lead us to fascism in the first place? Their response to the ICE shootings shows that […]

[#uspol] "Give the deputized fascist paramilitaries more training" is utter absurdity. The whole thing with Trump term two is discarding the mask, but I didn't expect the Democrats to also discard _their_ mask.