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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: May 27th, 2024

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  • I don’t think it is personally but I think that depends on your thoughts about its character. To use an analogy, if you think of metal bands where swapping out members is quite common, I’d argue that the changes are much more noticeable than on something like a PC. The vocal or lyrical style changes, or the guitar solos, while still good lose something in their character.

    Thinking of my own computers going from when I was 17 to the one I have now at 37, the technology is so vastly improved that the character would’ve been lost with most upgrades.

    I think unless it’s a purely cosmetic change or maybe a storage upgrade, i.e. an improvement to existing components, it just isn’t the same.

    That’s just me. This was a very interesting question.


  • I use perplexity.ai more than google now. I still don’t love it and it’s more of a testament to how far google has fallen than the usefulness of AI, but I do find myself using it to get a start on basic searches. It is, dare I say, good at calorie counting and language learning things. Helps calculate calorie to gram ratios and the math is usually correct. It also helps me with German, since it’s good at finding patterns and how German people typically say what I am trying to say, instead of just running it through a translator which may or not have the correct context.

    I do miss the days where I could ask AI to talk like Obama while he’s taking a shit during an earthquake. ChatGPT would let you go off the rails when it first came out. That was a lot of fun and I laughed pretty hard at the stupid scenarios I could come up with. I’m probably the reason the guardrails got added.


  • I bought a 2080ti for $1200 right before covid and everyone gave me shit about how I was wasting my money because the 3000 series had a lower MSRP which then ballooned to $2000+.

    So while everyone else was struggling to get a graphics card due to supply chain issues and prohibitive costs, I was gaming in 4k resolution throughout the pandemic. To say that this was clutch during a time I couldn’t really do much outside of the house with other people would be a massive understatement.

    I usually would not have spent that much on a card, but I won a hackathon cash prize right before so had some money burning a hole in my pocket. The card is still going strong and is still my daily driver, so I can’t say it’s been a bad purchase at all.






  • I’ve been saving for a down payment for a house for two years. It would appear my money is not wanted in the USA. I also have dual EU citizenship. My plan is to improve my spoken German and take my family overseas.

    As an atheist married to a Salvadoran woman with whom I have two hispanic children, I feel like after they run out of illegal immigrants we’ll not be far down the “committing suicide with two bullets to the back of the head” list. Or maybe we’ll just get sent to a camp that treats ADHD if you catch my drift.

    I visited Germany in 2022 and was very impressed with the walkable/bikeable infrastructure and ICE trains even if they were late on occasion. The food wasn’t my favorite but the culture and people were kind and they still seem to value rule of law and societal decorum to a certain degree. The idea that making a nazi salute in public is jailable/fineable is really how it should be everywhere but “free speech” yadda yadda…

    I have wanted to leave the US since 2003. Just didn’t have skills or money until now. I’m still going to struggle with a language barrier and finding a job with A2 level German. That’s my biggest issue right now I think.

    My mom moved to the US not knowing English. How the turntables have turned.


  • Fuck reddit.

    Feeding user data to an LLM. Jacking up API costs. Being generally unusable on mobile. Usurping old.reddit.com to try and force me to the official app on “unmoderated” and NSFW threads.

    Now with their IPO and a need to deliver ever increasing subscriber numbers and improved metrics for shareholders every quarter, the writing is on the wall.

    I hope it goes to zero. The only sad thing is all the knowledge that will be lost due to the sky high API pricing when the site eventually does sunset. I’m guilty myself of trying to de-enshittify google somewhat by adding reddit to just about every search. Hopefully people smarter than me have ways to archive that info.