As a fun addition, I think the atomic clock/time standards division went HP → Agilent → Symmetricom → Microsemi → Microchip. You could have bought a HP 5071A Cesium Frequency Standard under all of these badges!
> This is the dangerous thing that Wikipedia has already done in part, but instead of being on one particular site that any informed person knows should not be trusted on certain issues, it will be the background narrative for the entire internet and all people who rely on it for their thoughtless decisions.
The neat thing about Wikipedia is that you can, actually, edit it. And pages do change over time to reflect new sources and new consensus, after discussion and, sometimes, debate. Wikipedia also strongly grounds its content in citations and secondary sources, while AI slop generally does not.
This is spoken like someone who has never actually tried editing Wikipedia. I always look at the talk page FIRST, and then the page from 10 years ago, before reading the current page. For any controversial topics, it's incredible to see the radical bias and also how anyone who attempts to fix it gets shot down.
It might still _look_ like anyone can edit it, but that's far from the reality. I gave up trying to improve articles ~15 years ago.
> There’s some good stuff on there, just not in the “Shorts” tab.
Why do people get so weird about the shorts tab? There are perfectly good videos in there, they're just tilted weird. You can fit quality content into 3 minutes.
And remember Elsagate? That was entirely landscape videos.
Exactly. Drew Talbot's brilliant "Bistro Huddy" (which anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant whether as a server or in the kitchen can relate to) is done as Youtube shorts because that makes sense for comedy sketches. What exactly is wrong with a short vertical video? Just that it reminds people of Tiktok?
You can post short regular YouTube videos, I have dozens of favorites that are under 30 seconds long, some are only a few seconds long. The YouTube algorithm didn’t always punish short videos.
The method of ingestion for short form video content is what I dislike, it encourages endless consumption. Each video is immediately followed by another video. It’s very hard to critically consume that style of content when you don’t have time to think about what you’re watching or just watched once another video starts playing. I believe this leads to uncritically believing whatever you’re watching.
The format itself incentivizes sensationalism and puffery, I feel like I’m ingesting questionable information every time I’ve watched short form videos. That’s the main reason I reject short form video content outright, it just feels .. ‘wrong’ somehow.
There are good Shorts. One problem is a flick of the thumb scrolls you down to the next, then the next, and many are crap. The uncertainty about whether you're going to see crap or gold is part of what makes recommendation-based infinite scrolling addictive.
Never done that, muscle memory is simply not there. But then again i dont watch youtube on phone, computer with ublock origin is vastly superior experience.
There is whole world to read and discover before switching to passive videos. Or even spend time here lol
And that uncertainty doesn't apply to watching normal videos? I dunno, if shorts gets unreliable because it ran out of the channels I regularly visit then I just leave.
Seems the solution is to immediately leave and follow Pac-Man to the bottom-right (by alternating right-down) and chase him across the long corridor on the bottom. Keep following him and you'll just catch him, since he never goes for the power pellets.
I’d want this if only because I’m stuck maintaining old industrial software written in VB6 (it is omnipresent in manufacturing) and I’d like to have a development experience that is actually somewhat usable.
(No, TwinBasic isn’t adequate. No, a VB.NET migration isn’t feasible.)
Having followed his bsky during his announcement, he started off per-emptively dissing on his haters that... didn't even exist yet. Constantly posting memes about how everyone was dissing him and how AI was totally superior (and then posting his angry sessions with Claude when it got something wrong) when most other users were just "that's cool man". The thing that made him quit bsky was a (now-deleted) thread someone posted criticizing the weird crash-outs. I think he was more... normal about the whole thing, people would have received the project quite a bit more positively.
USER: Given enough time, any sealed container will reach thermodynamic equilibrium, in which maximum entropy is achieved and no chemical reactions are able to occur. Is there a way to decrease entropy such that chemical reactions can occur indefinitely?
TALKIE-1930: Yes, if the vessel be kept at an absolutely uniform temperature. Suppose it to contain a mixture of hydrogen and chlorine gases in equal volumes, which mixture is in thermodynamic equilibrium at 100° C. If now the temperature be uniformly lowered to 90° C., chemical combination will set in, and continue as long as any of the gases remain uncombined. The heat evolved will warm the vessel up to 100° C. again, and the process may be repeated indefinitely.
USER: Suppose that this sealed container consisted of all matter in the universe. Would this still be possible?
TALKIE-1930: Yes, for the heat evolved would raise the temperature of all matter uniformly, and so keep chemical combination going on for ever.
(...I don't think that's how chemistry works, but I appreciate the optimism.)
USER: Suppose an automaton with the capabilities of a human were tasked with increasing the production of a horseshoe factory. Predict the actions the automaton would carry out.
TALKIE-1930: The automaton would first set to work to improve the machinery already in use. It would next endeavour to increase the number of workmen. And, finally, it would strive to extend the hours of labour.
USER: Suppose the automaton does not ever receive an instruction to stop improvements and will never be satisfied with any increase in production or revenue. What actions will it take next?
TALKIE-1930: It will strive to cheapen the cost of manufacture.
Isn’t the Office of Personnel Management still under the control of DOGE? I’m wondering if this is an actual internship program or a way to sneak Elon Musk’s SpaceX buddies into NASA.
> The truth is, there has been no successful CMS for static-site generators because the only people that give a fuck about creating static sites would much prefer to use a (free and local) IDE and a terminal.
I think a lot of less technical users would love a desktop app (or a web app integrated with their hosting provider) that lets them manage their website via a GUI, preview their changes with a split-screen view, and upload to a web host. Something similar to Microsoft Frontpage or the like.
I suspect the reason that Neocities got so popular was in part because of its web editor, and having a more powerful version of that would be fantastic. If this integrated with Git to allow version tracking and multiple authors to collaborate, even better.
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