I'm a millennial and I discovered the Amiga, the demoscene, the lore and so on way after its era thanks to the catchy tracker music and demos. I've had several different re-introductions over different stages in my life, but the first was by trying to figure out as a kid how the tunes of my games could pack so much in less than 1MB per song, when my mental model was only MIDIs, WAVs or MP3s. Then I figured it out and got Modplug Tracker from the school's computer lab (had no internet at home) and that whole rabbit hole.
I'd notice the recurring nicknames of the scene groups, composers (skaven, necros, siren, etc), and so on always in my favorite games, it piqued enough interest in me to see what the Amiga was all about. Tried to emulate it to no avail back then, today it's really easy. Even without having lived through it I could feel that thing was something else. I really liked all the clever tricks programmers did to output cool graphics, like the tunnel sequence in Super Stardust (which also had some really catchy tunes), later saw the same trick in Iridion for Gameboy Advance, I think some people behind the studios of both games were also from the scene.
There's this video from Ahoy, about how the Amiga tried but couldn't survive in the end, told in his signature way:
Well, software already had a ~25% repricing last February, and plenty of SaaS names were down 30–50%. Now for that to hit the whole stock market at once (not just the Nasdaq), I guess you'd need some sort of macro / liquidity event or black swan. High valuations alone just won't do it.
When you have a flow well defined, like transactions going on, it simply doesn't scale. But AI can then be used for analysis, alerts and investigating failures of such processes very nicely. Agents can also be used to prepare a transaction package that needs more human input, like a customer service case, but again with clearly defined outcomes. At least that's what I've seen in my limited experience consulting for a local online retailer.
I'd be a bit more humble rather than terrified, because I enjoy some AI slop too, especially funny animals that remind me of my old pets' antics. There are levels of slop. But tasteless stuff with crap graphics plastered all over, loud edits or badly calibrated tts voices were already all over reels/tiktok long before AI, and people still liked that.
The unsettling thing on social media is the mind hijacking with the recommendation algo and scrolling motion that resembles a slot machine, more than the content itself.
I still use the Little Rat extension, it shows a little notification when an extension does a network request, and lets you see quickly what type and where. It can also block requests (doesn't seem to work all the time in Brave now, even with the flag on), activate and deactivate extensions:
Where are we? Probably talking to AI instead of posting, of course, getting our dopamine kick out of an autotelic dialogue, then moving on to the next thing.
But seriously, I haven't seen actual back and forth exchanges between bots, maybe those don't make it to the front page or get downvoted to death quickly? Some people do proofread their comments with AI before posting though.
Well, at least I learned a thing or two from this, or more like, to keep in mind for my next time messing with lights.
On diffusing them, I've had lamp shades that were adequate on paper but still didn't feel right; one eye would hurt and a headache would start (it has its own cause, after getting lasik a decade ago, I still see great but uneven light triggers a migraine) couldn't pinpoint until I started playing around this, rather than just limiting myself to intensity, temperature and the standard diffusion.
And it's funny, because the first thought they have if you get fined (say you didn't include the impressum in your personal website, or nosy neighbor found you mowing the lawn on sunday), it's that you must have done something wrong, not that the law is unfair.
It’s a Rechtsstaat with hardcore legal-positivist brain. Rules aren’t guidelines, intent doesn’t matter, context doesn’t matter, fun definitely doesn’t matter.
And it's still strange that after a year, it only sometimes picks it up, depending on how relevant it thinks your location is.
For me it's a coin toss whether the answer tailored to my location is useful or not; I'm often following up with something like "do not show local results, I'm shopping in the US".
But this also happens with other features: the other day it was telling me it won't access a link I pasted. Next message, I ask why. Chat answers that it can't, it has no way to browse the web. I see Web Search wasn't explicitly turned on in the conversation (not that it has mattered before anyway). Turn on for the next message and tell it to try again, voilà. Didn't try just regenerating the answer, but that also works sometimes.
Yup, I had massive success with a theragun around the traps, and gentle massage around the SCM area for the ocassional flare up. Also caffeine use, vigorous exercise, loud fans, teeth clenching and sleeping on the side with the neck bent almost reliably triggers it back. But interestingly, after the initial flare during the pandemic and allergy season, the noise subsided with oral steroids. Now it's the occasional reminder maybe a few times a month, always the right ear, then it goes away.