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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/117389906323212713 I would delete it all if Apple provided an official way to do it, which they should. I have a secret safe way to make Apple Intelligence never work (don't want to say what publicly, to avoid them noticing and fixing it) but I would like Apple and every other company to acknowledge that a large fraction of us don't want any of this.

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  Writing some code today, a massive refactor to enable some long-needed functionality, and just when I thought I was going to hit the wall and need a major detour to align huge disparate parts, it turned out an old abstraction fitted perfectly and the hardest problem was already solved. Pure joy. Euphoria. And then I thought, if I had an LLM agent do this, there would be no joy. None for me, because I wouldn't have found it, and none for it, because LLMs are just automata. I won today.

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@dabeaz/117259349418891202 In the early 1970s, most folks could do some mental arithmetic. They had to. The arrival of pocket calculators quickly reduced most people's ability to do "math" in their heads. Ditto with Google Maps: people can't navigate without it. A recent study of Polish radiologists using LLMs to assist showed a measurable drop in the doctor's own ability to diagnose without them LLMs will have that effect...

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  People constantly say they "can't do math" in their heads, when what they really mean is "arithmetic". But "arithmetic" is harder to say than "math". So let's start calling arithmetic "rith", which is easy to say (and also sounds a bit like "rizz", which is fun). Also, I _can_ do rith in my head, but I know that's nerdy and maybe you can't.

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117066509290131562 In 1986 I went to Australia with my big folding telescope to see Halley's Comet, which I'd been dreaming about since I was a kid. It turned out less exciting than other comets I had seen. But one night, camping in the middle of the continent, the sky was so dark there was no visible artificial light. The entire horizon was dark. The nearest building was 150km away. A weak, scratchy radio signal was playing Bach. I just lay b...

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  Good thing climate change isn't causing any trouble or this could be an issue. Words fail, again. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/08/climate/amazon-data-center-texas-pollution.html?unlocked_article_code=1.31A.BKnE.5DhN0aBPzpDP&smid=url-share

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  We don't know for sure yet whether the AI business model will lead to consciousness, but we know for a fact that it creates insanity.

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  Does anyone know a source of fine pitch metric bolts in Australia? I'm looking for M5 fine, which have 0.5mm thread pitch. The standard, widely available is called coarse and has 0.8mm thread pitch. They are as rare as lorikeet teeth around here, as far as I can tell, and I don't want to order from overseas. Thanks. P.S. The threaded hole already exists. This is not a choice I made.

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  Computers don't even work in my dreams. Last night, trying to use Google maps to find a way to the airport, every time I scrolled it jumped to Europe. Nightmare stuff taken right from real life. Calendar and messages also screwing up. Away, foul beast!

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  Remember this? Man Very Early Made Jars Stand Up Nearly but it feels incomplete.

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  Renee has a favorite knife but it's hard to distinguish from the others when stored in the knife rack. I decided to put a nice red end on the handle using dip rubber, aka liquid electrical tape. It's often used to put a grippy rubber overcoat on a tool handle, but works well for smaller things too, like the knob of a violin bow so it's not got sharp corners. The problem is that the stuff is in a tube and always separates, like peanut butter in a jar, so I did what any normal person...

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/117010755608045166 Also this: I recently had an hours-long Internet outage and my PS5 game (Ghost of Tsushima) failed to start, even though it had been running fine a few hours earlier. Worse, the console hung and eventually crashed, then later when rebooting yelled at me for not shutting it down safely. Networking is not reliable, so don't depend on it being so! Or at least fail gracefully. Fail. 0/10. Do better.

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  YouTube Studio is succumbing to fashion trends. Bermuda shorts are next.

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  I'm worried. Is something wrong? It's almost 10AM and I have zero requests today to update software versions or firmware.

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/116930245213443949 This is exactly how I feel.

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  Nolan's "The Odyssey" is totally wrong. The real Polyphemus didn't look like that. The nerve of that man, I tell you!

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  The gap between hype and reality for AI is vast. https://karlbode.com/the-ai-hype-reckoning-is-upon-us/

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  Hey, guys, when you ask me for my cookie choice and I say "reject", you're still allowed to remember that I said "reject" and not ask me again every damn visit.

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  Long ago, I was an angry young man who railed against all the injustices of the world, but time has passed, I have matured and learned so much more about things, and now I am an angrier old man. (Importing from my old account my pinned post, which seems even more apt (apter?) now than when first expressed.)