Exactly as the title says. What film becomes better if someone suddenly gets hit by a bus?

Could be at the very end for an unexpected laugh at the sheer suddenness and absurdity. Could be some karma against a much-hated antagonist. Could happen earlier in a film, and abruptly cut off an otherwise bad movie by just ending it then and there. Or maybe even change the film's trajectory by changing focus to the recovery and aftermath.

Can be played for laughs, can be played for drama. Could be fatal, could careen the story (and sequels) in a totally different direction. There are infinite possibilities, and this seems like a fun question to explore. I can think of so many slasher films that could be hilariously cut off at an early point by a bus just appearing out of no where to hit the killer.

And while I want to restrict this to settings with buses, I think I'll open the floor to other settings. Buses don't really exist in the Star Wars universe to my knowledge, but it's fun to think about the changes to the franchise from a bus hitting Jar Jar Binks in the first film (or not hitting him and revealing the Darth Jar Jar theory to be true in the process), along with the investigation into what the bus was and how it spawned on an underwater planet.

I love writing, it's one of the most human things about humanity. It's communication, art and sharing all at once. It's been fundamental to culture and progress for 1000's of years.

LLMs are, in a way, really good at writing. They have the larger part of human creative output distilled into their weights. So it was inevitable that more and more people would start publishing articles and blog posts written (all or in part) by AI agents.

I don't like it but I accept it, there really isn't anything I can do about it. What I was hoping, though, is that high signal to noise ratio places on the internet (Tildes among them) would reject it and we could go on consuming 100% organic prose, at least for a while.

And for while that's exactly what happened. In techy places like Hacker News, AI posts were quickly flagged and downvoted into oblivion. At Tildes they mostly didn't show up at all, or if they did I missed them.

That seems to be ending though. Now I see agent written pieces on the front page of HN with 100's of comments. There's always a highly upvoted comment pointing out that the piece is slop, but you have to scroll to find it.

The reason I use HN as an example is that it's full of people with extensive experience using AI agents who are in a position to tell if something is slop. And it looks like the larger part of readers (or at least commenters) can't tell the difference anymore. If that's true at HN, it's going to be true everywhere.

It is getting harder to tell when something is slop, people are post editing, handwriting intros and getting better at prompting to remove obvious LLM tells. But if you have any practical experience with these tools, it's still pretty easy to tell. Somewhere during post training certain patterns end up getting heavily favored. Interestingly, many of them happen across all of the frontier models. Em-dashes are the most famous but there are so many more. Most are rhetorical tricks or formatting patterns rather than punctuation.

Reading LLM prose, many of the tropes don't stand out at first, instead they land as strong writing. But after you see them repeat enough times they start to become obvious. Even putting the tropes aside, the hallmark of a lot of LLM writing is that it's more rhetoric than substance. Low signal, lots of noise.

I don't have a solution, it's starting to look like many (maybe most) people aren't going to be able to tell when they're consuming something that required minimal thought by the "author" who prompted the AI. Which is sad because, up until now, we could assume that, when we read something, someone cared enough to put time and mental bandwidth into creating it. That's become increasingly less true.

I suppose this post is me feeling wistful for the internet we used to have, written exclusively by humans. I continue to hope that people will reject slop at places like Tildes, but in order for them to do that they have to be able to identify it. Maybe people will get better at that, there is definitely a point where you've consumed enough slop that you can smell it from a mile away. But of course the slop is going to keep getting harder to detect.

I don't want to go as far as to say that slop will take over the internet, I think (hope) that people will keep wanting to read organic, human, writing. And that as a result we'll come up with strategies and solutions to support that.

It's a weird time. Right now every LLM blog post and article that goes viral is signalling to the prompter, and anyone watching who can tell what's happening, that there is demand for slop. And of course with demand comes profit. I think we're at the beginning of a steep curve.

I've decided to give up my kidney to a stranger and document the process and hopefully my posts can be the kind of resources I wish I had when I first looked into this.

Someone here recently linked to Scott Alexander's post on his non-directed donation experience [1] and afterwards I got recommended Jesse Eisenberg's interview on his experience [2]. I think this led to me thinking about the subject and deciding that I at least need to look into this and see if my worries about it are founded. It turns out they are not. Here are the highlights of my research:

1. Compared to other activities, donating a kidney is not especially risky [1]
2. It is entirely free; all aspects of the process are free including travel [5]
3. If anyone in your family needs a kidney, they are at the very top of the list for a living donor kidney [3]
4. NKR will cover up to $2000/week in lost wages using Donor Shield [5], though if your work allows you to take paid time off, I highly recommend you save their resources for those without that luxury
5. Non-directed donors can use "chaining" to have their one donation result in 3-7 further donations due to matchmaking on the NKR (this is complicated to summarize, ask if you want information or see the link) [4]

Step 1: Reach out to the National Kidney Registry (NKR)

The ideal way to become a non-directed donor is to reach out first to the NKR. They run the family voucher program that protects your family should they need a kidney in the future. They first have screening questions, then there is a questionnaire about your medical history that you complete, and immediately upon completion, they have labs ready for you to take. I reached out to NKR yesterday morning and had labs completed yesterday afternoon at a local clinic.

As for what's next, my labs will come back and the NKR says I will then choose a preferred donation center. I have absolutely no idea what considerations matter when choosing the best donation center. I assume something local, since I can't fly immediately after surgery and the drive home will be painful.

If you've considered kidney donation and didn't do it, what held you back? I want to know to 1: see if I can correct a false belief you have about the process or 2: see if I should reconsider this whole thing. Also, if anyone wants to join me on this journey, click on any NKR link and click the donate button and let's do this!

[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-left-kidney

[2] https://youtu.be/udZi-l8H5jY

[3] https://www.kidneyregistry.com/for-donors/i-want-to-help-a-stranger-in-need-of-a-kidney/

[4] https://www.kidneyregistry.com/for-donors/start-a-chain/

[5] https://www.kidneyregistry.com/for-donors/kidney-donation-blog/does-it-cost-anything-to-donate-a-kidney/

As a proud husband, I wanted to share that my wife's new book is officially released today! We both knew nothing about publishing books before this journey and now she is independently publishing her 5th book and first in a new series. She writes romance, so not my normal choice of material, but I have read all of her books and really enjoy them. There is just something cool about seeing my wife bring characters to life, especially since I do not consider myself a creative.

She did have a photography business before Covid, which fell apart thanks to the lockdowns. That's when she got into bookstagram and eventually decided to write her own books. Its been a wild ride since and she has met a ton of great people. It sure doesn't pay the bills, but that seems pretty par for the course. AI slop isn't helping that either.

Anyways, if you have Kindle Unlimited you can read it there for free. Or you can find her book on Amazon if you want. Sadly, its the best place left for indie authors.

Welcome all to our fortnightly (ish) gardening group discussion!

Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.

Ive moved it to a fortnightly thread, as sometimes gardening can be a bit slooooowwww motion

Had been wondering about this for a bit. The "classics" we know had already all been written and popular by then. Right now, I don't see any major piece of writing apart from the occasional r/nosleep posts that would evoke that kind of feeling when being read which I would get reading say, "Psychosis" or "Gateway of the Mind". The "backrooms" theme was the only recent concept I know that came to be in that subculture, but that was lot more visual than in a literary format. Thinking about it, a kind of mainstreaming of this culture happened in the years before 2020 through memes and animations, and then it just faded out of memory. What do you folks here think happened to it? Where might the authors be now? Horror as a genre doesn't feel the same again since creepypastas have gone.

Edit (from a comment): Might it be so that text-based subcultures died out in favor of visual ones? SCP articles rely heavily on the visual aspect of things. I can't imagine someone putting out the effort to write out something like "Ben Drowned" and get a good audience nowadays, though of course I may be wrong.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I have an old PC that I put Linux Mint on around Windows 10 end of life. It's been pretty decent except I noticed at some point videos started stuttering a lot. The stutter would happen every 10 to 30 seconds on every video. Didn't matter if it was Firefox or Celluloid (the mpv wrapper that comes with Linux Mint), didn't matter which streaming site I tried, or what codec was used on a local file.

I tried everything: different kernels, different GPU drivers, bunch of Firefox about:config media settings, Celluloid/mpv buffer sizes and video acceleration configurations. Even messed with pipewire (audio) config to see if its priority was too high.

This is apparently a really common problem if you search for "linux mint video stutter". All sorts of different varied solutions out there that work for some users and not others.

One thread suggested removing Cinnamon applets. I don't have any custom applets on that PC, and was afraid to disable any built-in ones. So I went one step further and replaced Cinnamon with Xfce using:

sudo apt install mint-meta-xfce

Which is Mint's meta-package for Xfce desktop environment and other stuff that works well with it.

It worked right away with no further configuration! Xfce to the rescue! (Sure, maybe uglier and fewer options for display scaling, but I'd rather have basic things like videos working smoothly.)

Long time ago Xfce was the right choice for an even more ancient PC back in the day. Funny how it circles back to being the solution again.

So if I ever want to move any older PCs to Linux, I think I'll be skipping Cinnamon and reaching for other lighter desktop environments instead.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like zohran mamdani, games.mobile and satellites. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was perplexed.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

This weekend, I've fulfilled a long dream of mine and upgraded my computer to a fully custom waterloop. This is, for a number of a reasons, a complicated process, and outside of general advice, it's difficult to provide an exact guide on how to do this. Custom waterloops are, well, custom. They depend mostly on what computer case you use, and what sort of reservoir and such you've bought. As such, my advice can also only be general.

Plan ahead

Check online for custom watercooling builds in your case. Use those as a guide for radiator and reservoir placement. Sketch ideas out on paper. Measure out the places inside of your case where you intend to place components. Check the your pc case manual, those very often contain info on where you can place radiators and reservoirs.

Some cases are ill-suited for custom waterloops. Consider buying a new case rather than building in an old, ill-suited one. It will save you a lot of pain.

Some cases require modifications. I had to cut into mine with a metal saw to make space for a radiator. Minimal material was removed from the frame, invisible after the case is put back together. I also had to drill into it to place the reservoir. The holes case manufacturers place for reservoirs are best-effort guesses. Unlike for fans, and thus radiators, there are no standards for reservoirs.

Do not rush

Expect a marathon, not a sprint. There will be setbacks. My process, setbacks and all, took me 3 days. And I still fucked up assembling my GPU. The die has bad contact and I'll have to drain the loop, pull it out, disassemble it and put it back together again. A lot of this was also spent waiting for next-day deliveries to show up because I'm dumb and was missing things.

Prefer soft tubing, and do not go for PVC

There are no performance benefits to hardline tubes, and they are a bitch to measure, bend and cut precisely. That 95° angle that was meant to be a 90° is going to be evident immediately, and forever. Soft tubes are forgiving, easy to put into the system and much more time efficient. They also do not require extra equipment dedicated solely to bending hardline tubes. Think about where your build is going to sit. On the floor? Who gives a shit how it looks?

Edit: if you opt for soft tubes, don't get them made from PVC. They very often leak plasticizers into the loop that gunk up your components and reduce performance. You'll need to swap them after some time and they also tend to harden. To minimize maintenance, go for EPDM tubing. It's black instead of transparent, but it's better in the long term.

Custom waterloops are all about you, and if you insist, then you do you. Hardline tubes are the endboss of all pc builds. Be ready for a challenge. Conversely, some folks really want transparent soft tubes. Just know what you're getting into.

Tube sizes

The standard soft tube is 13 mm outer diameter and 10 mm inner diameter, or 13/10. There's a ton of other sizes as well but remember even if the inner diameter is larger, liquid flow improvemets are going to be marginal. Different sizes also need different fittings.

Respect the crink

Soft tubing is a breeze to put into your system, but don't make those corners too tight or it'll crink and cut off flow. Check this especially when you close up the panels of your pc case. Tubing is cheap, comparatively. Don't be afraid to use more than you need.

Money

Custom water loops are pricey. Full copper radiators start at 100€, water blocks are usually hundreds as well, with the tubing, fittings and all it's normal for cooling equipment alone to account for a grand. You're bolting an aftermarket cooling system onto your PC that will turn it into a racecar. A lot of that is finely machined copper. It costs.

Remember the extras

Ya know how I said that I needed to order some extra things last-minute? Thank fuck for Amazon and their fast deliveries. If you live in a larger city, there's also a good chance a specialist computer store somewhere might have what you need.

Leak tester

Those are small air pumps with a pressure gauge. You close of all ports and then pump air into the system, 0.5 bar maximum (!!!), and wait 60 minutes. If the pressure is maintained, congratulations, your system is air- and thus watertight.

Test your individual components before you put them into your case! This way, you know that the components themselves are tight, and you avoid having to pull out a radiator after screwing it in place because you forgot to tighten that one end cap you can now no longer reach. Ask me how I know.

Also test our loop when it's fully assembled. Should you have a leak, divide your loop into two halves and leak test those. Repeat (divide into halves and test) until you have located the leak. If you have tested your comps individually before, it's going to be a radiator fitting you forgot to tighten or your reservoir top 99% of the time. Have a book or a podcast ready because this is a long process with lots of downtime.

Motherboard 24-pin jumper plug

These nifty little things are incredibly cheap and useful. After you wire everything up, you want to fill your reservoir and turn on the pump, but obviously you do not want to immediately electrify your entire system. So you pull the 24-pin motherboard cable of your motherboard and put the plug into it. It bridges specific pins, tricking your power supply into thinking a motherboard is connected. This way your pump turns on without the rest of your system. Once the water is circulating and not catastrophes have occured, you can turn off your power supply and plug the mobo back in.

Common advice

This is advice that's often repeated in watercooling circles for beginners. If you're seriously considering doing this, you will likely already have stumbled upon these. I'm adding these just for posterity.

Do not mix aluminium and copper/brass

Cheaper watercooling components are often out of aluminium while pricier ones are out of copper. You do not want both in your system as they eat each other through galvanic corrosion. If your cooling blocks for the GPU and CPU use copper (they very often do), the rest needs to be out of copper or brass as well, fittings included!

Buy more fittings than you think you need

Remember, per tube you'll need at least two! Check that they have O-rings, as those provide the seal.

Put a drain port into your loop

You should generally drain and flush the loop at least once a year. This will be a lot easier if on low points you have faucet you can attach a tube to and open to drain it. Pulling the loop back apart is generally the last thing people think off when building a custom loop for the first time, so it's useful to know.

Consider quick disconnects

Quick disconnects are special fittings you can put into a tube or attach directly to a port. You can then pull them apart with minimal or no leakage of your cooling fluid without having to drain your loop. Really useful for example the GPU, which tends to be the component that's swapped out most often.

Use cooling fluids over distilled water

Obviously no fucking tap water, ever! But lots of folks also gravitate to distilled water. Cooling fluids like what Alphacool or Aquacomputer make have extra stuff in them, like corrosion inhibitors and biocides that prevent algae build up. You can also mix these yourself if you can get the inhibitors and biocides concentrated but if you're on that level I don't think you need this guide anymore.

Also, colored liquid fucking sucks. Unless you want to pull apart your water blocks and clean them with a toothbrush, use clear liquids. If you want fun colors, put RGB into your case.

120 mm of radiator length per 100 W of heat generation

The two components generating the most heat in your PC are likely the CPU and GPU. Check the specs of those to see how much heat they generate. This number is generally known as the Thermal Design Point (TDP). Radiators come in many sizes fitted to fan sizes, mostly in multiples of 120 or 140 mm, but running this calculation gives you a baseline for how much radiators you need. More is always better! Fit in as many radiators as you can into your case, but if your case can't fit the number of this calculation then you need to look for a bigger case.

Knowing the TDP is rarer for GPUs, you can also use board power or power draw as a substitute. We're doing napkin math here, no need to be precise.

Example:

CPU: 170 W

GPU: 300 W

-> round up to 500 W, which means 5 * 120 = 600. A 360 mm radiator fits 3 120 mm fans. You'd need 2 radiators with 3 fans each to cool your system adequately.

Alternatively, a 280 mm radiator fits 2 140 mm fans. You'd need 3 of those to cool the system.

Radiator thiccckness

Radiators come in different thicknesses. Since what dictates a radiator's ability to dissipate heat is the total surface of it's fins, increasing the thickness improves cooling ability. However, most PC cases, even full towers, are practically limited to 45 cm rad height at most.

Noise

A big motivation for doing this was noise. Cooling everything with a custom loop means that I've lost the 2 fans on my CPU air cooler and the 3 fans on my GPU. What remains are the case fans only, 2x180 mm ones and 3x140 mm. Those can now run at dramatically lower speeds (10% fan speed at idle, ramping up much more slowly) for a nearly silent build even under full load. The pump and reservoir combo I've chosen are isolated from the pc case through rubber standoffs which means that the pump, even when at 100%, runs dead-silent.

Chasing diminishing returns

Switching to a custom loop alone is a massive bonus to the computer's ability to be cooled, because water is a much more efficient way to move heat than air. Case radiators also have much more volume than the heat sinks on your GPU and CPU right now, improving the cooling further.

Once you step into this world, the choices open to you are staggering. Delidding the CPU. Using liquid metal instead of thermal paste, etc. etc. Unless you're planning on overclocking your system, there's no point to doing any of those things that are actively dangerous.

Liquid metal buys you a couple of degrees °C at best, at the cost of being dangerous and difficult to apply and even a tiny escaped drop having the ability to short and fry your GPU for good.

Delidding your CPU is only useful if you plan to overclock. I did it, but only because the company Thermal Grizzly sells delidded CPUs and a fitting water cooling block. If you're doing it at home, the investment is way too large to make sense. Delidding also requires liquid metal afterwards. See paragraph above for that.

If you're in this just because you want a high performing system at less noise, then using a PTM material instead of thermal paste is going to be good enough.

All of these improvements lower temperatures of your components. Delidding the CPU and cooling it directly buys you something like 20°C under load. But the thing is, a good water cooling loop can absolutely cope with a high performance CPU running at 100 per cent. With the IHS on it'll just push 80°C instead of 60°C.

Functionally, there's no difference if the CPU runs at 60°C or 80°C. The only time it matters if if you're over clocking and through that causing the CPU to approach its thermal limit. Then dropping it by a few degrees makes sense.

If not? Skip them.

I hope these help people. Feel free to ask any questions!

Edits in no particular order:

Loop order does not matter

PC custom water cooling loops are not car engines, and as such the thermal differences between coolant and components is much smaller. This means that having a radiator follow a component to immediately cool the water down is much less effective than just adding more rad volume. It also tends to make your tube runs messier and is overall not worth it.

I was reading the potential gatorade-esque business idea thread @daychilde put up the other day and it got me thinking about all the potential business ideas my partner and I have been kicking around. I'm hoping folks can post their prospective business ideas here and folks within those industries and provide feedback, insight, or hurdles to the ideas. Kind of like the hobby thread from a few weeks ago. Excited to hear what everyone is thinking about!

Hey everyone!

I know there are some people on Tildes who like making games as a hobby. I’ve had a long-standing passion for game development, but I never managed to finish a project. About a month ago, I decided to push myself to finish a small game and publish it somewhere, and finally that day has come! Orb Sweeper, a 3D minesweeper puzzle on a sphere, is now live on the Google Play Store. Just as a disclaimer: it’s free, has no ads, and works offline by default, so I’m not earning anything from it. I just genuinely wanted to share my first finished project, along with the joy and relief I feel now.

Honestly, I’ve always been more ambitious when it comes to game mechanics. I’m a big fan of strategy games, especially TBS games over the years, so of course I always dreamed of creating a grand 4X strategy game of my own. Over time, I implemented many different systems and mechanics that are complex on their own: generation of realistic and interesting maps, pathfinding, economic models, different variations of game AI, and so on. But since these kinds of projects are huge, I was never able to finish one as a solo developer, or even bring it to a properly playable state. I burned out relatively quickly.

Over time, I realized what motivates me to continue: when somebody else is also working on the project, and when you can quickly see the results of your work. Both things are difficult to achieve. First, it’s hard to find people who are ready to spend a lot of their free time developing a big strategy game while following the same vision. Since it’s a hobby and I cannot pay for development, I also have to spend a lot of energy motivating others, not just myself. The longest I managed to keep a small team of two enthusiasts together was one month.

Second, with complex games like strategies, there are only a few big and impactful mechanics that bring the game to the state of a playable prototype, but getting there demands a ton of polishing. Graphics, sounds, small animations, 3D models… a lot of work that is almost invisible on its own, but contributes enormously to the overall look and feel of the game. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in these small fixes, and that also leads to burnout.

So I decided to make my projects progressively smaller until I could realistically complete one from start to finish. It’s a bit sad to see that only a Minesweeper-like game survived this approach, but I feel like it’s an important starting point. Seeing my game actually published gives me a bit more motivation to finish other projects.

But then… it’s Google. All interactions with its platform make me feel a bit frustrated. It’s surprisingly difficult to publish such a simple game. I even had to hire paid testers just to satisfy their entry requirements for closed-test user engagement. There are so many policies regulating data handling that even if your game does nothing in terms of transferring data, handling accounts, or showing in-game ads, you still have to go through all these bureaucratic procedures anyway. I guess it’s probably the same with Apple, but their famous support still hasn’t helped me with account verification after a month, so I’ve yet to experience that side of things fully.

Anyway, I’m glad that the game is available somewhere at least. And I actually play it myself sometimes on my phone. I know some people here are going through similar obstacles, so I have a question for you: what motivates you to continue working on big, complex games? And more generally, how do you avoid burning out on long-term projects?

I caught wind of the BC-250 after the Linux on PS5 post where @moocow1452 posted about them and shared a link. The BC-250 is an APU cut down from PS5s that didn't pass Sony QC, they were originally slated for waste but largely got picked up by crypto miners. I hadn't got myself anything for my birthday or promotion, so when I found a deal, I grabbed it for the HTPC I'd wanted but couldn't justify. (Long post, tl;dr at end)

Specs:
6-core AMD Zen 2, stock clock 3.5GHz
AMD custom GPU, stock clock 1.5GHz*
16GB unified GDDR6 RAM+VRAM
M.2 2280 slot
*Stock lock is weird and limited, will discuss

I'm not sure exactly when they got proper Linux support or folks started using them for gaming but I'm definitely behind the curve. You used to be able to get them <$100 but now they seem to be going for $180. I found a "pre build" for $275 shipped that had it ready to go, including a case, cooling, PSU, 256GB SSD, and unlocked BIOS... this isn't too far from what I would've totalled had I gotten the board for ~$80, and saved me some headaches. While the seller pre installed Bazzite, no way was I trusting the OS installed by a random eBay seller.

So what's it take to make one of these usable, what trouble did the seller save me? Let's start with the BIOS -- this needs to be unlocked by flashing though I'm not totally sure if it's required to use it at all but at the very least it unlocks the dynamic 512mb VRAM. 16GB total is kinda limiting today and the default split is 8/8 RAM/VRAM -- a static split isn't exactly ideal -- depending on your game, you could easily be maxing out one with unused of the other. The dynamic 512 reserves only 512mb for the GPU alone and allows the rest to be properly split as needed (mostly, there's still technically a VRAM cap that can be raised with kernel parameters).

OK next saved headache was the cooling. See, these were built as server units with fans set to blow air through them. The heat sink fins are closed off on the top. One can print a sleeve to have a standard fan push air through, but opening the fins up and letting the fan push air through from the middle is more effective, more like your typical consumer GPU. Seller did a messy job, but it is opened in the middle. Some folks use 2 fans and fully open the fins for a cooler/quieter build.

The final headache was minor but they saved me from sorting out the PSU and power button. Since the board is powered just by 8 pin PCIE, for this PSU, two pins on another header need to be shorted to stay powered on, seller already had this in place. Seller also soldered power and reset buttons to the board.

So with the hardware sorted, what does the software end look like? While it can technically run Windows, but it does not and will not have GPU drivers -- though folks have added external GPUs. The main 2 OS options folks recommend are Bazzite and CachyOS. Folks say Cachy is better but benchmarks I saw weren't that compelling, I already use Bazzite and it seemed to have less extra steps so I went with that, standard installation process went smooth and it was basically ready to go from there... So why am I futzing around so much?

Well, the dynamic VRAM can collide with the default ZRAM swap, causing crashes and other errors. So I went through disabling that, enabling ZSWAP, then tweaking config and kernel parameters according to community info. So part of my futzing was comparing speed and stability with the various RAM settings and swaps.

So the next futzing was the GPU clock. The stock is locked at 1.5GHz over 920mV always no matter if load is high or low, but PS5 runs em around 2.3GHz and higher volts. There's a community governor that can decrease volts/clocks under light load and unlock the stock. Folks easily get 2.0GHz at 1000mV but some push 2200+ at 1150. So testing with that was more futzing around, playing in Expedition 33 for half an hour to see if settings were stable. I found the defaults to be fairly aggressive, causing artifacts and crashing. I disabled all their default points over 920mV, set one at 2.0/1000, and called it a day. Didn't feel like trying to squeeze out another 100MHz. Also boosted the bottom 700mV point up by 20 since I saw some graphical artifacts at low loads and that cleaned those up. (<700 locks it right back to stock parameters so that's the effective minimum)

Next up is the CPU, stock has it at 3.5GHz at 1180mV. Folks have been able to get the same clock down to 1000mV, some mad lads pushing 4.1GHz and like 1.3V. There's another community tool for helping with this where you punch in a target clock, voltage, and temp, then it tests it out. I haven't settled this one out, I may go for a bit of an under volt to help keep it quieter/cooler since it's an HTPC, or may just leave it at stock. Folks also recommend disabling mitigations for Spectre/Meltdown as it significantly slows the CPU and you're fairly unlikely to need it for a DIY Steam Machine.

So I was stumbling through this following the community wiki, it had some good and useful info, but it didn't seem entirely consistent and sometimes was just wrong. Turns out, it's an AI compilation of community info. I'd have saved myself a ton of trouble if I'd found this repo and followed their instructions as that's what I eventually found worked best.

Expedition 33 was my main real world benchmark tool. With FSR+LSFG on medium, I was hitting 1440p@90fps, 1080p@45fps without. The site compares it to a 3060, I thought that was mine until I double checked and have a 3070. It does E33 with DLSS+LSFG at 1440p@120fps cap on medium, or 1080p@60-70fps without either. So while the .info site seems to accurately describe the GPU as similar to a 3060, their benchmarks seem to include scaling and/or frame gen based on my limited testing. However, E33 still looked bad and off compared to my Nvidia at the same settings. After a day of fiddling, I looked it up and turns out, E33 specifically looks worse on AMD.

As for HTPC apps, Jellyfin flatpak works great. Official Plex apps are deprecated, both flatpak and snap, they run terribly. Girens (unofficial Plex client flatpak) seems to work well, but requires a mouse and sub menus don't work in big picture. I plan on using a PS4 controller (touchpad works as trackpad) for the time being so this isn't too big a deal, but it's definitely less polished than the Plex smart TV app. VLC with the network drive mapped so we can play direct from file as back-up. And finally VacuumTube for YT smart TV interface with ad blocking. Hardware encoding/decoding does not work and will not so it's all done by the CPU, but it was enough for my high bitrate 4k HEVC decoding test.

It doesn't have proper sleep states. Can't wake from USB/LAN, power button only, and doesn't actually sleep CPU/GPU so it doesn't really save power in sleep. Shutdown/cold boot is inconvenient for a daily use HTPC. Estimated 60W at idle, about $6 a month left on 24/7 for us, perhaps an extra $50/yr compared to a box with proper sleep. However, most it can pull under load is 235W, less than a typical gaming PC. Not enough to realistically break even versus a gaming PC with proper sleep though, so it's probably an expense worth considering in comparison shopping for a similar usage.

Final Verdict: do I recommend it? Honestly, if you're getting bare board for $180, maybe not, but also depends on who I'm recommending to. I seen someone on the discord selling them for $150, others may be selling too, perhaps prebuilts even. Between case, fan, PSU, and SSD you're ending up closer to $400 for a running build -- and that's before wifi/Bluetooth/controller if you don't have extras of those already. At that rate, you may be better off getting a mini PC + eGPU dock + older graphics card, but I'd need to shop around to see how their price:performance ratio compares. On top of that, you'll likely need to do the trouble the seller saved me. Getting the software going is fairly simple nowadays though, so long as you have the foreknowledge to just use NexGen's repo. If you're curious, do some comparison shopping between what you find for these versus a mini PC + eGPU setup. Don't forget to consider the cost of the BC250's idle draw if you don't want to cold boot each day/use. I wanted a machine that could be a media client, do some modest gaming, and to experiment with AMD and unified V/RAM. I ended up with one that can do that and some AA/A, so I'm satisfied, despite the quirks.

Inspired by a youtube video thumbnail I saw saying "Which Link would function the best in society?" I didn't watch the video, but that did get me thinking to how weird player characters can behave. You know, with all the walking into strangers' houses, constantly crouching and jumping while moving, breaking any containers we see in hopes of loot, using special powers for silly things... Destroying stuff just for the heck of it...

So! Here's my extended question: how long would a society comprised mainly of video game protagonists last? And I mean protagonists who behave the way players make them behave, not just how they're written by the story. And that includes still having all potential powers.

Can be based on specific past playthroughs, could just be generalizations of how they're typically played. How many protagonist characters could actually hold down proper jobs without getting fired? Who would be able to avoid causing heavy destruction in daily life? Or get arrested fastest?

How long would they be able to put up with other protagonists' weirdness before snapping and starting a city-wide battle?

I feel as though I have lost touch with the idea of the OS as software.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking for that all in one solution. Notes, reminders, calendar, etc. in one convenient app. Notion first, then AI came and fucked it all up. Obsidian was cool, super customisable, but I found that I don’t really need what it offers, stuff like linking and graph view aren’t that useful to me. The idea of a ‘second brain’ has always been interesting to me, but I could never find anything that made sense.

Recently, the thought hit me… “isn’t an OS just an super all-in-one app?”. This sounds stupid, but I haven’t actually considered the power of—in my case—macOS itself. I’ve just been using it as a portal for all these other bits of complex software, when surely it’s all built in?

Obviously finder would be the core of the system, but does anyone have experience with just… using the desktop metaphor as intended? Folders with files in them, that get opened in a program, and when you’re done, get saved back into the folder. Put things you use regularly on the desktop (or shortcuts to them, to maintain organisation) and delete them from the desktop when you don’t need them anymore. Again, it sounds stupid typing it out, surely the answer is “yeah dummy, that’s how you use a computer!!!!!” but… why do I have obsidian, and the photos app, and all this extra junk?

Going back to obsidian, for example. Surely, textedit (which has relatively simple rich-text editing, as well as plaintext) and some well thought out folders can get me where I need to go. It’s also widely compatible, since I can just… copy a file, should I choose to switch to Linux completely at some point.

I suspect this disconnect is a result of the iphoneification of personal computers, there’s a lot of layers between you and the file when you’re on a mobile device.

So, am I just talking nonsense? Or is it time, after these years of searching, for me to finally start using the computer as a computer again?

I think this might be a hot take, but as the cliché goes, please hear me out.

First of all, what I define by “new and radical” is something that is not only significantly different from what we had before, but it must also fulfill another criteria: it must become ubiquitous.

So, for gaming input devices, I would say that what Nintendo tried to do with the Wii didn’t stick. The technology wasn’t new, but its implementation was new and radical. It was a gamble, for sure. I loved it for what it could do (and, honestly, I miss it), but it’s been almost exactly 20 years now, and the Switch 2 has the double joystick, d-pad, ABXY, quadruple shoulder button combo that all other controllers have. That basic form factor is what became ubiquitous. Motion controls didn’t go extinct, but apart from aiming via gyroscopes, they’re not that common. Classic controllers though, they’re here to stay. In fact, in these last years, I’ve seen the market for controllers explode. It’s wild.

What Nintendo did with touch screens on the NDS/3DS did become ubiquitous though (even if they kind of pulled out of it): That input method is what mobile games rely on. Its home hardware are mostly smartphones. What was new and radical about it (and something that Steve Jobs explained well when he introduced the iPhone) is the idea of having one stylus/finger tip as the tool for for the input, and then designing the input methods (swipe, tap, hold, etc.) around it. Again, the technology wasn’t new, but its implementation was a radical departure from conventions at the time, and again, it became ubiquitous. I don’t see smartphones ever going away (or rather, slabs of glass that we swipe, tap, and hold our fingers on).

I think that there was a hot minute there where we all thought that VR was going to become the next big thing. The input for that doesn’t use technology or methods that are radically different from controllers (they are still just buttons, gyroscopes, and accelerometers, as far as I can tell), but combined with the (supposedly) immersive VR experience, they could have made up for a package that feels new and radical, except that... it became a niche, and I don’t see that ever changing. Baring a leap in technology that allows us to instantly plug into The Matrix, without any complicated setup, I don’t see VR becoming important in gaming, even if it becomes significantly cheaper. It’s just not convenient enough, and in the end, I think that convenience is king, and controllers/touch screens are the ultimate convenience.

You may be thinking about what Valve is doing with touch pads, on both the Deck and their new controllers, but I don’t see it catching on (not to mention that it doesn’t really feel all that radical to me). I’d love to be proven wrong (and I know that those touch pads can do way more than just replace a mouse, since they also have “zones” that can be mapped to, etc.), but in the end, I don’t see it replacing the third pillar of gaming input devices: keyboard and mouse. For PC games, especially certain genres, nothing will ever beat the convenience of that combo.

So, for gaming inputs, I think that we have reached the end of the line. If before the end of my time on this earth, something new and radical comes along that becomes ubiquitous, then feel free to come back here and rub it in my face. I’m willing to bet a lot of money that it won’t happen.

Now, let’s have a talk about form factors, or rather, the hardware.

I think that the Switch 1 and the Steam Deck really kicked off a golden age of handhelds. Indeed, it feels to me as if some new handheld device releases every week. It’s absolutely wild. I don’t know what changed since the launch of those two consoles. We’ve had handhelds since... what? The Game & Watch? Maybe earlier? I don’t know, but it’s been decades. Yet only now has the market for them finally grown big, maybe too big.

Why do I say too big? I would like to know why these companies keep developing new models. Are they really selling that many units and making that much profit? If they are, then wow. Good on them. I’m skeptical though. I hope it doesn’t lead to some market crash. I should add that, as someone who feels lukewarm about handheld gaming at best, I don’t understand why they sell so well (again, if they do). Yes, every time I see a new handheld, I want to buy one, just out of FOMO, but look: I have a Switch 2 and I always play it docked.

I had a GBC/GBA/NDS growing... for the sole purpose of playing Pokémon... always at home. With a couple exceptions on the NDS, I never cared for much else outside of that. It may be that I was conditioned to feel this way about handhelds, since my first console was a Nintendo 64. My preferred way to play games, is to comfortably recline on a chair, turn on a TV (the bigger, the better), grab the controller, and play in the comfort of my home.

I cannot relate to people who have the courage to take their $200, $300, $400, $500 (or more expensive) handhelds out into the wild, where they could drop from their hands (I’m very clumsy), get stolen, or worse, only to play on a tiny screen while sitting very uncomfortably. If you do this, please explain to me why you enjoy it. I genuinely don’t understand. I’m scared spitless just from yanking out the Joy-Cons from my Switch 2, let alone unplug it from the dock. I also don’t care much for mobile games for similar reasons: screen too small, games not that interesting for me.

Alas, I have to admit that handhelds have become ubiquitous. I’m not 100% sure, but I think that, as a form factor, they might stay around forever. I don’t think that smartphones, the other form factor that is ubiquitous, are going to completely replace them. Handhelds have the added convenience of analog sticks, buttons, and being gaming-first devices. Smartphones don’t have that.

The third and last ubiquitous form factor would be consoles and PCs. I group them together because I have a feeling that sooner or later consoles are just going to morph into PCs. I don’t know what Nintendo will do though. They seem determined to have complete control over their ecosystem, but that will require them to keep releasing new consoles with walled gardens. Can they become the Apple of gaming? Can they make this business model sustainable in the long term? I’m not 100% sure. Either way, “big, stationary gaming machines” as the third category, are here to stay.

VR could be a new and radical form factor, but for the reasons that I mentioned before, I think it will forever remain a niche. Other than that, I can’t imagine what else we could come up with.

Do you agree? Do you disagree? Do you have a different take? Do you maybe have an idea of what could become ubiquitous in the future? Is there an input device or form factor you’d like to be more commonplace (like Mii with the Wii) or be invented (if it hasn’t been yet)?

Maybe I should reserve this for a different topic later, but I also don’t see video games themselves coming up with any new and radical gameplay mechanics anymore. I think we already have all the genres that we could possible come up with, and everything that feels new is really just a mashup of something that came before, arranged in a way that hadn’t been thought of yet... kinda like music.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like creative commons, opting in out and david attenborough. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was curious.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Welcome all to our fortnightly (ish) gardening group discussion!

Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.

Ive moved it to a fortnightly thread, as sometimes gardening can be a bit slooooowwww motion

Radicalization has, of course, varied meanings to pretty much any person you ask to define it and it is both contextual and a spectrum. I will provide no definition of such here as this isn't a pissing contest and a person's definition is likely to be highly personal based on their own lived experiences up to and post said "radicalization".

Today is my yearly reminder of what I consider to be the impetus of what "radicalized" me.
So thought I'd ask all of you for yours.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I've been getting more suggested game trailers on youtube and have been surprised by the number of "knock off" games. I've seen three different versions of Dregde (a game I absolutely adore) and a number that seem to be mimicking Hollow Knight. I don't even mean just like fishing or rogue like games, I mean like full on knock-offs.

I get the niche they fill, but I'm kind of curious about the ethics of it. Like, I would love to play more dredge but it doesn't appear more is on the way. But I also don't really want to support a company that is just completely ripping off everything from mechanics to art. Like this game seemingly took the actual artwork from Dredge. As a developer I think I'd be pretty pissed.

Is this really common and I'm just learning about it now? Is it the video game equivalent of Atlantic Rim? Where do people stand on playing these kind of knock off games?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like beast studios, steam controller and anonymity. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, for those following along.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

This can be contentious, so feel free to self-categorize as "fresh twist on" as well if you wish 😅

(edit) moved my pick to the comment section ...

Finale of season 4 spoilers here. You have been warned that people will discuss spoilers here. Don't blame me if you are spoiled of things that happen all the way to the end of season 4, which premiered today.

Anybody else watch the Season 4 Finale and just blown away by how it ended? I was NOT expecting a full PTSD Mark episode to end with him agreeing to let Thragg use the planet as a breeding planet. Its such a smart, awful way to have him make a morally compromised decision and come to terms with Thragg. Also the mid credits scene of Allan being told to use the Scourge virus! Amazing television and i can't wait to see what they do next.

Edit: thank you to whomever added the tags for me. I am usually just a lurker and appreciate someone flagging this post appropriately! I was too excited to get my post up and see what people had to say!

A few months ago someone posted an article on the male loneliness epidemic. I had shared my thoughts in the comments on that post. But I think that article and a lot of comments are under the impression that "redpill" content/ideology is still in vogue or relevant in today's world. It still has its followers and influencers for sure, but it's not at the forefront of cultural discussions anymore. To think otherwise is outdated, the redpill era died around 2022/2023 and was replaced by a more incel-derived "blackpill" era.

Thanks to TikTok, what was once relegated to niche internet forums became mainstream. The biggest influencer from this internet phenomenon is Clavicular, who is currently getting articles written about him in press outlets such as The Hollywood Reporter and People.

I am no stranger to talking about looks (side note: I would have taken more time to write that out and discuss broader topics, such as "types," if I had known it would have gotten as much attention as it did). And I have been around looksmaxxxing spaces on the internet since about 2022. I'll try to make this as brief and simple as I can.

What is the blackpill?

The blackpill is a deterministic outlook on life. It states that your genetics determines the quality of your life, and if you were not born with advantageous bone structure and height, then "it was over before it even started." You won't be successful in life, you won't find love, and you will end up a lonely, pathetic person wishing you'd been born looking better.

How does this differ from the redpill?

The redpill has some overlap with the blackpill. Both believe that men are the true victims of society. That feminism has been detrimental, this and that, and the other. The redpill, however, insinuates that you can self-improve. There's almost zero focus on improving looks, and it's almost entirely focused on making money and increasing your status.

A core belief of the redpill is that all women are gold diggers, and in order to get laid, you need to make a ton of money. The blackpill does not entirely dispute this, but it does say that if a woman chooses you for money, she will never actually love you. And that you are paying a lot of money for affection and attention that an attractive man gets for free.

I think that explanation in and of itself should show you the difference between the two.

What's looksmaxxxing? Are looksmaxxxing and the blackpill interchangeable terms?

They are not.

Looksmaxxxing is what guys do to look better, to increase their rankings on the looks scale. So that they can start getting laid (primarily) or start to "mog" (i.e., outshine everyone in a room).

In certain blackpill spaces looksmaxxxing is seen as cope, since, again, your life was determined by genetics and there's nothing you can do to fix this.

You might think looksmaxxxing consists of losing body fat, getting a skin care routine, dressing nicely, hygiene, and cologne. And that is part of it, all of that stuff is considered "softmaxxxing" but there's also "hardmaxxxing" as in surgeries and other more serious treatments such as steroids and peptides (which technically occupy a grey area between soft and hard maxxxing). An example of a popular surgery is double jaw surgery, here's the subreddit for it so you can see examples. If your jaw was not properly developed and you have a recessed chin (or a pushed-in chin), then a double jaw surgery is something you can do that would greatly increase your attractiveness. Although it does carry quite a bit of risk. There are other surgeries that people do on their eyes, their noses, ear pinning, there's a lot.

It is essentially a belief that your best investment is going to be in how you look. It's a bit of a running joke that instead of going to college, you should invest in plastic surgery, and that will do more to make your life better than a degree.

How do they view women? How do they view themselves?

The belief is that women are hypergamous. That they will only want to date up, and it's significantly easier for women to date and get laid, even if they are below average looking. And that even an above average looking man will have trouble since they aren't the holy grail of attractiveness.

Here's a brief explanation of their rating system.

• Sub-5

5 is considered average; sub-5 means below average. Not even that you don't get attention but that you get negative attention from the people around you.

• Low-Tier Normie / Low-Tier Becky
• Mid-Tier Normie / Mid-Tier Becky
• High-Tier Normie / High-Tier Becky

The "normie" categories are all average categories. Ranging from on the low side of average (LTN) to above average (HTN). The High Tier categories are where a lot of attractive actors sit, think romcom leads, the boy/girl next door types.

• Chad/Stacy

Essentially unobtainable beauty. Taylor Hill or Henry Cavill.

Depending on who you're talking to, someone would say that "life starts at HTN" or that life doesn't exist unless you're "Chad." And that if you're anything below that, you might as well not even exist.

How did it get popular?

The first instance most people probably heard of it was likely in 2014 when Elliot Rodger committed a mass shooting at a University. He was a member of a looksmaxxxing forum (the original looksmaxxxing forum, I believe), which led to the site being shut down and thus delaying any chance of its popularity. If you go back and watch and read what Elliot Rodger believed, it makes more sense in today's context now that this thought process has been more normalized.

In 2023, TikTok started promoting this content. Primarily from "edits" here's an example and coinciding with that were also the rise of a few influencers. All leading up to Clavicular, and how dominant he is on social media (thanks in part to funding from Peter Thiel). He was a kid posting on looksmaxxxing forums, was a micro celebrity in the niche, became a slightly bigger internet celebrity on TikTok before streamers started bringing him on leading to his insane fame.

Conclusion

Going back to the initial tildes post that I linked to. That whole thing was essentially saying, if you're just a good person, then someone will want to date you or fall in love with you or want to have sex with you or whatever. And I think part of the reason why looksmaxxxing stuff has taken off is that it feels more honest. It's not coddling you, and if you do improve your looks, you're going to see better results in dating than if you read feminist literature or something. So the takeaway ends up being that one of these places was telling me the truth.

Like, on a broader scale, it's a response to the body positivity stuff from the 2010s. When everyone was being told that it's okay if you're obese, it's healthy, it's beautiful. And there was just kind of a sense of performance to all of it.
The effort to change what people are attracted to, or to shame people for not being attracted to a certain thing. Has it gone too far? Probably, but I think that's why it took off initially and why it grew so quickly.

I obviously have my own personal experience about this, and so I very obviously know that it's not just what's inside that counts. Normal everyday people will make assumptions about you based on the way that you look. And I don't think it's a morally wrong thing to acknowledge that it happens, nor do I think it's a morally righteous thing to pretend like it doesn't.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

So with the Paramount acquisition, all the new HP content, and the general state of both TV and Movie ownership are people returning to the high seas?

I was an eager participant of the first and second wave of piracy in the early and late 00s, and considering the re-consolidation of the entertainment industry and the seemingly nefarious acquisitions of late, I am considering hoisting the black flag once again. I guess this post has two objectives: 1. how are other people navigating our changing media landscape, and 2. for those who have stayed immersed in piracy or have returned to it how have things changed in the last decade or so. Obviously Megavideo and Putlocker are no more, so are there directions to point folks who are just getting back to it. This can be streaming, torrenting, anything really.

Caveat: Let's not even give the horrible human that is JK airtime. I mentioned HP because folks might want to indulge without supporting but if we can keep the discussion to piracy that would be awesome!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like infowars, framework.laptop 13 and web.small. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was studious.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like viktor orban, sam altman and autism. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was taking note.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

I've had a ring camera for several years. Historically I've been mostly satisfied with it, but lately they are adding some features that are pretty annoying.

The worst is that they've been adding neighborhood alerts and other proximity alerts, with categories for traffic and weather and lost pets and things like that. Today I got a "community alert" which was actually an advertisement for a local animal shelter. I don't have anything against animal shelters, but my motion detector camera alter is not the correct venue for this message. It's clear that amazon is trying to muscle in on Nextdoor. I don't use Nextdoor. I find it to be like facebook, full of cranks and advertisements and nosey annoying people.
So now I had to wade through a few pages of menus to find where to turn of this new annoyance. Obviously, if I could I would opt out of all new features.

The other annoying thing is that they turned on some AI evaluation of what the camera sees. So I was getting messages like "there's someone with a garden hose on your lawn" or "a person is carrying a cardboard box". There were a few things wrong with this

• I didn't sign up to have this and it slows down the alerts so they are up to 30 seconds after the motion is detected
• The AI sometimes made errors, especially at certain times of day where it misidentified different things in the yard (for example, some place marked by shadow was interpreted as a sidewalk when there isn't a sidewalk there). This happens of course because the AI doesn't know anything about my property, it evaluates everything from scratch each time it looks at an image.
• The ring app started bugging me with upselling messages to pay extra for the AI messages

So yeah. I just wanted to vent about the enshittification of this thing. I'm also aware of the privacy issues of ring cameras and how they're going to use the "pet finder" functionality to keep track of everyone. But this rant isn't really about that more important stuff, just the frustration of how these tech companies won't just leave anything alone because they have different goals than us.

Sorry for the late posting (life got in the way).

Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion!

Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.

‘Seed’ questions:

1. Would you like to garden in a different climate, if so where?
2. Who shares in the your gardening outcomes? Friends/family, or is it more personal?
3. What if your motivation to garden? Is it the reward at the end, the journey or something else?

Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion!

Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.

‘Seed’ questions?

Has the weather been working out for you?
What is your favourite gardening tool, or are you looking to get a new one?
What is your biggest error this year?

I probably triggered some PTSD right there.

Was just in a meeting at work, where we listed off everything that makes software development hard and slow. An excersize for the thread would be to replicate that list. It turned out that Claude helps with like 1/5th or less of it....especially in a collaborative environment.

So, the situation we're now encountering is that random business areas can vibe code out something, tell nobody, throw it in AWS, have it become a critical part of a business process that fails when they quit, and nobody even has access to look at what was made.

It gives me comfort that in about 5 years there will be a new surge in demand for programmers to reign in all the rogue applications that need shutdown because of the immense risk to continual operation of a company, from data leaks to broken payroll.

It'll be Y2K all over again.

I've been thinking about the demographics surveys recently and how they usually draw a good reception, but are difficult to compile in a privacy-minded way and finally visualize the data. I think the 2024 survey never ended up getting its results published?

So I thought maybe instead of one big yearly survey we could organize smaller weekly or monthly surveys that ask one or a couple questions at a time. And then while the current survey is running the question+answers for the next survey could be plannedy out. And the questions could be about anything and not just demographics related things.

In terms of technical setup I've been using a self-hosted n8n instance for a while and with tinkering around with it I've come up with a decent proof of concept to make these surveys happen via n8n's Form nodes. This makes it so all the data is in our own control and it's just a matter of building out any visualizations we may want.

And at the end of a survey the data could be anonymized and published so any further analysis can be done by whoever wants to.

One other thing I've come up with is a way to "authenticate" responses so we can know when a response was made by a real Tildes user. In the survey flow the server can generate a UUID and give it to the user to put in their profile bio. Then we scrape the user's bio and check if that UUID is present and now we know that yes, this is a real user. And then the UUID can be removed again from the user's bio (so it can't be linked back to them). This would also enable us to not have to save usernames at all (yay privacy). Edit: this would be entirely optional if it were to be added. There would be no requirements to fill in the survey unless we start seeing a bunch of spam or bogus responses.

What do you Tildoes think? That's what we settled on right? Is this something you'd be interested in?

Edit: Since the topic has a good amount of votes I quickly set up a server and a form to collect questions for anyone that has ideas! :)

-> https://survey.tildes.community/form/submit-your-question

I was talking to a dear friend of mine who told me years ago how he has been physically abused by his wife and how hard it was for him to share this, because so few people believed his story. Or laughed when he dared to share. Yesterday we talked about how hidden these stories are. He believes it is a lot more prevalent than it seems. People are just to ashamed to share or afraid they won’t be believed.

I recognised his trouble. I was abused by my mother for years, physically and mentally, after she separated from my dad (who she abused as well). In my life I have shared this story to only a handful of people, often being disappointed by their reactions.

What made this especially difficult was how my mom managed to convince me and the people around my family that my dad was actually the aggressor. ‘Woman gets beat up by man’ is just a lot more believable.

In hindsight, it feels like such a twisted dynamic, where my mom as a female abuser used the stories of actual female victims to hide or defend her own abuse.

Of course I do not in any way want to diminish the aggression that women experience. It is a lot more prevalent, and this issue needs all the attention it can get.

I was just wondering if there are any other men here who are victims from female abusers and if you recognise the difficulty in sharing your story as well.

For a long time programmers have had two types of program verification tools, static analysis (like a compiler's checks) and dynamic analysis (running a test suite). I find myself using LLMs to analyze newly written code more and more. Even when they spit out a lot of false positives, I still find them to be a massive help. My workflow is something like this:

1. Commit my changes
2. Ask Claude Opus "Find problems with my latest commit"
3. Look though its list and skip over false positives.
4. Fix the true positives.
5. git add -A && git commit --amend --no-edit
6. Clear Claude's context
7. Back to step 2.

I repeat this loop until all of the issues Claude raises are dismissable. I know there are a lot of startups building a SaaS for things like this (CodeRabbit is one I've seen before, I didn't like it too much) but I feel just doing the above procedure is plenty good enough and catches a lot of issues that could take more time to uncover if raised by manual testing.

It's also been productive to ask for any problems in an entire repo. It will of course never be able to perform a completely thorough review of even a modestly sized application, but highlighting any problem at all is still useful.

Someone recently mentioned to me that they use vision-capable LLMs to perform "aesthetic tests" in their CI. The model takes screenshots of each page before and after a code change and throws an error if it thinks something is wrong.

I've found myself replying to different people about the early 2025 METR study kind of often. So I thought I'd try posting a top level thread, consider it an unsolicitied public service announcement.

You might be familiar with the study because it has been showing up alongside discussions about AI and coding for about a year. It found that LLMs actually decreased developer productivity and so people love to use it to suggest that the whole AI coding thing is really a big lie and the people who think it makes them more productive are hallucinating.

Here's the thing about that study... No one seems to have even glanced at it!

First, it's from early 2025, they used Claude Sonnet 3.5 or 3.7. Those models are no way comparable to current gen coding agents. The commonly cited inflection point didn't happen until later in 2025 with, depending on who you ask, Sonnet 4.5 or Opus 4.5

The study was comprised of 16 people! If those 16 were even vaguely representative of the developer population at the time most of them wouldn't have had significant experience with LLMs for coding.

These are not tools that just work out of the box, especially back then. It takes time and experimentation, or instruction, to use them well.

It was cool that they did the study, trying to understand LLMs was a good idea. But it's not what anyone would consider a representative, or even well thought out, study. 16 people!

But wait! They did a follow up study later in 2025.

This time with about 60 people and newer models and tools. In that study they found the opposite effect, AI tools sped developers up (which is a shock to no one who has used these tools long enough to get a feel for them). They also mentioned:

However the true speedup could be much higher among the developers and tasks which are selected out of the experiment.

In addition they had some, kind of entertaining, issues:

Due to the severity of these selection effects, we are working on changes to the design of our study.

Back to the drawing board, because:

Recruitment and retention of developers has become more difficult. An increased share of developers say they would not want to do 50% of their work without AI, even though our study pays them $50/hour to work on tasks of their own choosing. Our study is thus systematically missing developers who have the most optimistic expectations about AI’s value.

And...

Developers have become more selective in which tasks they submit. When surveyed, 30% to 50% of developers told us that they were choosing not to submit some tasks because they did not want to do them without AI. This implies we are systematically missing tasks which have high expected uplift from AI.

And so...

Together, these effects make it likely that our estimate reported above is a lower-bound on the true productivity effects of AI on these developers.

[...]

Some developers were less likely to complete tasks that they submitted if they were assigned to the AI-disallowed condition. One developer did not complete any of the tasks that were assigned to the AI-disallowed condition.

[...]

Altogether, these issues make it challenging to interpret our central estimate, and we believe it is likely a bad proxy for the real productivity impact of AI tools on these developers.

So to summarize, the new study showed a productivity increase and they estimate it's larger than the ~20% increase the study found. Cheers to them for being honest about the issues they encountered. For my part I know for sure that the increase is significantly more than 20%. The caveat, though, is that is only true after you've had some experience with the tools.

The truth is that we don't need a study for this, any experienced engineer can readily see it for themselves and you can find them talking about it pretty much everywhere. It would be interesting, though, to see a well designed study that attempted to quantify how big the average productivity increase actually is.

For that the participants using AI would need to be experienced with it and allowed to use their existing setups.

I want to add that this is not an attempt to evangelize for AI. I find the tools useful but I'm not selling anything. I'm interested in them and I stay up to date on the conversations surrounding them and the underlying technology. I use them frequently both for my own projects and to help less technical people improve their business productivity.

Whether AI agents are a good thing or not, from a larger perspective, is a very different, and complicated, conversation. The important thing is that utility and impact are two different conversations. There isn't a debate anymore about utility.

I know this probably won't stop people from continuing to derail conversations with the claim that developers are wrong about utility, but I had to try. It's just hard to let it pass by when someone claims the sky is green.

I understand that AI makes people angry and I think they have good reason to be angry. There are a lot of aspects of the AI revolution that I'm not thrilled about. The hype foremost, the FOMO as part of the hype, the potential for increased wealth consolidation really sucks, though I lay that at the feet of systems that existed before LLMs came along.

It's messy, but let's consider giving the benefit of the doubt to professionals who say a tool works instead of claiming they're wrong. Let them enjoy it. We can still be angry at AI at the same time.