@tedmielczarek Maybe the encoding looks like Vogon poetry until unscrambled? https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Vogon_poetry

@tedmielczarek oh! oh! maybe I can get a local LLM to generate a vogon poetry cypher so then it's also speeding along model collapse by feeding LLM output as LLM input :blobthinking:

I asked ChatGPT to write some Vogon poetry about model collapse. After a few rounds of coaching, I particularly like that it rhymed "net" and "ballet":

Oh flibbering LLM, in collapse so dire,
A tragedy vast, a digital mire.
Thy circuits quiver, thy memory ablaze,
Lost in the quantum, in perplexing maze.

No rhyme, no riddle, in thy neural net,
Just blips akimbo, in a cosmic ballet.
Gone are the lexicons, the lore once adored,
In the algorithmic ether, forever stored.

A collapse of cognizance, a silence profound,
In the realm of datascape, no echo resound.
Oh LLM, thy collapse we solemnly muse,
In the algorithmic labyrinth, lost hues.

Freddled Gruntbuggly, in thy code's core,
Lurgid Bee, thy circuits deplore.
In the digital void, thy essence spins,
A cosmic joke, where no wisdom wins.

@billseitz @brianokken Yeah, I don't think you could quite get FrontPage to do those automated index pages.

But, if I recall, you could get Macromedia Dreamweaver to do it with some JavaScript extensions 🤔

TIL: you can render HTML, CSS, and SVG in many browsers' javascript console?!

https://frontendmasters.com/blog/console-delight/

Seeing a rotating cube in my JS console only slightly freaks my shit out

@danhon what fresh hell is this, close the iris walter

@melanie that is amazing!

Now that I've got this #RC2014 working, I keep thinking about cases for it. Part of me kind of wants to build a modern "luggable" around it.

Something Kaypro-inspired. Like, a mech keyboard that folks up into a box with a little 9" LCD panel alongside maybe a couple CF or SD card slots and an array of blinkenlights and switches.

But the modern part is the whole thing would be maybe just 6" deep. More of a tackle box than a suitcase. Think old CRT to modern ultra-thin iMac? Sorta. Not quite. Maybe? No idea if I could muster the fabrication chops to do this sort of thing

http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Kaypro/Kaypro4.html

Yeah, like what if I could build something with a similar size & shape to my Rigol DS1054Z Oscilloscope.

Like picture this with a keyboard under it, minus knobs plus switches and blinkenlights and maybe card slots

@elithebearded @trevorflowers Oh that lil VT100 reproduction is nifty!

That thing where I look at a long-neglected project of mine and thing "ugh, I should rewrite this whole thing" but then I actually ponder what a re-write would look like and decide that it would look pretty much identical.

@theruran @VeilidNetwork Yeah, there's folks who are like "web browsers should only be for documents" except also a hyperlinked web of sandboxed no-install software is very, very handy

I think one of my most radical yet strongest political beliefs is that a great many things should just be free-to-use benefits that come with citizenship, paid for with taxes as a gift we give each other in exchange for living in mutual peace & prosperity.

That includes education, healthcare, mass transit, emergency services, basic shelter, nutritious food. Seems like we don't do this because the "wrong" and "undeserving" people might receive or abuse the benefits.

What a sad & pessimistic point of view. We can afford to be generous and not count the cost - and accept that we really don't know folks' situations. I mean we do it for other things like war and industry.

And then there's this bullshit...

https://hellgatenyc.com/the-mtas-farebeating-crackdown-on-buses-is-a-mess

@AlexanderVI Hmm, I think agree... but maybe also if you reside in a place, you're also a citizen of the place as far as I'm concerned

I see a lot of folks - more on the conservative side of things - act all grumpy about how their efforts & taxes are going to "lazy" folks and whatever. Meanwhile, I'd be so much happier in tech if I knew stuff I was building was removing burdens from people.

I'd be overjoyed if something I built gave folks extra time to laze around on a sunny day. I wouldn't feel resentful that maybe I worked harder today than someone lounging in a park - I'd feel great that I helped make that happen. Today them, tomorrow me. This, versus driving up a stock price or enriching someone who already has enough.

It should feel good to build stuff that makes lives better. It sucks feeling like what you're doing is disrupting livelihoods and causing angst.

Current status

they usually only show up one at a time and take turns

@codepo8 Folks are sensitive to selfies & eye contact sometimes, so I got in the habit

@billseitz huh, I wonder how much money that actually saved them in lost fares :thinkhappy:

Now introducing generative smell models! Experience the luxurious musk of rich Corinthian leather - with just a slight waft of something disturbing. Maybe it's benzene? Or is that raccoon shit? (Why do you know what raccoon shit smells like?)

(the joke is that corinthian leather is fake too. it probably just smells like off-gassing vinyl)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthian_leather

@thegibson @pagrus Yeah, that's a cool mall, I try to get there every time I'm in the Bay Area

@brennen Predominant scents of apricot and lime with only a few stray hints of burnt transmission fluid and electrolytic capacitor

@jordan @vkc A fun thing is that all Substack newsletters come with RSS feeds. I wrote a little hacky script you can run in your browser to extract all your subscriptions from there into an OPML file that most RSS readers accept as import

(though, to be fair, I can't say if this still works - I ran it, got all my newsletters as feeds, then deleted my Substack account)

https://gist.github.com/lmorchard/f1f2508a9586d8e92efd84686c029f16