constants and variables

I have to restore entries from a backup that is not entirely reliable in the date/time that the entries were posted. The good news is that I have a backup.

I have posts in the pipeline, I need to make time to polish and publish them. Stay tuned to this channel.

It's been two months since my last update. I've been busy. I guess. Or lazy. Hard to say.

I do know that I'm struglling again with motivation. I don't seem to be able to move like I used to. I'm a bit stuck behind the screen. I tend to lose myself in Youtube (mostly Shorts) or doomscrolling Reddit. I am aware of these habits and I have a bit more power to disengage with them and for this I am grateful. Else I'll lose myself.

My best friend told me recently he's lost desire to do anything but watch Youtube. I hear him loud and clear. I've been able to remove myself from social media¹, but I haven't been able to kick the Reddit habit. There's a lot of utility in Reddit and Youtube, and they are designed to keep you on that site. Much like AI chat is designed to keep you engaged and on that site. Our shorter attention spans are klilling us slowly and we don;t even notice it.

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1. I recognize that Reddit is often referred to as social media, though I don't agree with that, it's more of an unstructured message board. Now that I wrote that, social media is a collection of unstructured message boards… fuck.

I had an inkling that this might be the case. I often think about how much we were able to do with limitations in thechnology. We don't (usually) program write software in machine code anymore and I wonder how much faster apps would be if we did. Of course there are drawbacks. Hardware architecture changes very fast and coding in high level languages affords us portability with our code, much like what the language Java promised us in the 90's.

It turns out that if you let it, some sites will download over 512MB of content due to how the advertising platform works. The site in question seems to think that using RSS will resolve this issue (it will) instead of fixing the web page to be more efficient (which the author of the original article pointed out). I first saw this post on Shubham Bose's website via HackerNews that depicts the 49MB website. The comments on HackerNews are good insight and Shubham points out that Windows 95 consumed less space than the post from NYT. As with the post about PC Gamer, NYT's page bloat is mostly due to ads. I hate ads and will block ad networks on my personal network. Browsing the web on another network is a real treat. I have maintained to myself when I see a pop-up asking me to disable my ad blocker taht I would not use one, if I could trust as servers. In the not too recent past I came to distrust second party ad platforms because Doubleclick was hijacked and malware was installed via banner ads. Lovely. Since then I've been wary.

There is discussion about ad blocking equating piracy and there is real merit to that argument. For my part, I usually do what I do when I'm hit with a paywall, I bounce from the site. I have a hope that some data nerd somewhere sees that I left as soon as I was asked to disable my ad blocker and brings that to someone who can make a decision about how ads are being served. I recognize that not all publishers can afford to have a department that manages their ad content and the tech skills required to keep that functional. I understand that decentralization is easier to work with, letting a dedicated external team handle the ads. That's another post for another time though. I pine for an Internet that feels more personal and less driven by capitalism.

Here is an article posted on the Seeker. I beleive that there are three camps regarding AI and AI Use.

1. The first is that AI is cool and the greatest thing ever. I find that these people have the talent to create on their own, but for some reason find this better.
2. The second is that AI is terrible and should be called out as such on sight. I find that these people cannot see any benefits to using AI and that it's terrible for everything. People, the planet, resources, etc.
3. The third group has really bad FOMO. They love, hate, or are indifferent to AI but are so afraid if being left behind (posisbly again) that they latch on to the technology.

I see a need to be familair and loathe to use it. I see the merits for AI and I also see that people shut off their brain when they use it. I am requently reminded some variation of this image back in the 90's:

Shamelessly stolen from here

And as I type this out, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on the latest Diggnation video podcast are espousing Apple for not jumping on the AI bandwagon early enough (rather, at all). :(

Kottke gets linked here again because of this wonderful site. Go read the article, I'll wait.

What I had not previously considered is that the mega corporations can build in a lack of competetion by buying all the competetion. The Buy it for Life crowd loves these old brands with good reason. I expect that the trick will be to find any of these items before 2000. The best place might be thrift stores. I have my backpack made by the shoe company Simple that I'm sure is at least from 1996. It needed repair, and I fixed it punk rock style. It gets regular use and is the first bag I grab when my satchel does not have enough capacity.

I'll poke around and see if I can find a how to find vintage gear site. I'll update this post if I do.