creesch's recent activity

  1. Comment on People who want less AI are breaking up with Google Search in ~tech

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Searxng is a meta search engine combining other search engine results. I guess it is sort of distributed in that sense but also very different.

    Searxng is a meta search engine combining other search engine results. I guess it is sort of distributed in that sense but also very different.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Rich Markdown Editor Userscript for Tildes in ~tildes

    creesch
    Link Parent
    For the failure scenario maybe store a timestamp and ttl value that is relatively short. That assumes of course that the network error is short lived. More elaborate as far as UI and UX go is not...

    For the failure scenario maybe store a timestamp and ttl value that is relatively short. That assumes of course that the network error is short lived.

    More elaborate as far as UI and UX go is not loading it by default but have an indicator a saved draft is available

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Rich Markdown Editor Userscript for Tildes in ~tildes

    creesch
    Link
    Very nice! Autosaving comments is also a nice but if I hit cancel and get the "Discard your reply?" popup I feel like that should also clear the autosaved content. Though I am not entirely sure if...

    Very nice! Autosaving comments is also a nice but if I hit cancel and get the "Discard your reply?" popup I feel like that should also clear the autosaved content. Though I am not entirely sure if it is possible to act based on the native confirmation dialogue. It might be possible to replace it outright for a similar result.

    In the same sense when I reply with a top comment a way to clear the saved content might be nice.

    Bit of a tangent, but also good to see that EasyMDE is being maintained again. I looked at using it a while ago (apparently two years ago or so) and thought it was no longer maintained.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on What change would make you quit Tildes? in ~tildes

    creesch
    Link Parent
    There are a few extensions and user scripts around that do give you slightly more to work with. For example, here is a very meta screenshot. No need to remember the syntax just press the buttons...

    There are a few extensions and user scripts around that do give you slightly more to work with. For example, here is a very meta screenshot. No need to remember the syntax just press the buttons like you'd do with word.

    They are listed on this wiki page: https://tildes.net/~tildes/wiki/customizing_tildes

    I am using a heavily customized version of Tildezy.

    But I also noticed on that page that @TangibleLight made a fancy rich editor very recently giving you a full blown rich text editor.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on My Accessibility Stack and the future on Wayland in ~comp

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Being a developer and face of a big open source project a lot of people depend on sadly comes with a lot of unwarranted hostility. GNOME is no exception there, but the project overall always has...

    Being a developer and face of a big open source project a lot of people depend on sadly comes with a lot of unwarranted hostility. GNOME is no exception there, but the project overall always has stood out to me. It is one thing to be opinionated about UI and UX, it is a whole other thing to look like you are actively fighting large parts of your user base. This partially falls into that as far as I am concerned.

    A obvious example was the introduction of GNOME 3 where it took years for basic features to be added back. Stuff like Minimize/Maximize buttons, no options for a visible taskbar of any kind, no icons on the desktop, no system tray, no power off button (unless you knew to use alt).

    Even if I still think that people shouldn't be hostile towards OSS devs in general. I do understand why there might be more hostility aimed towards GNOME devs in general.

    Having said that, I do feel that in this case you probably are reading a bit too much of the escalating tone in there. To be clear, I do think that @Barney is reading way too little of it in there either. The fact that they specifically work on accessibility shows they do care about the subject, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Which I think also adds to their frustration about people saying it isn't enough. Which from both points is actually valid, they are trying to add the features but can't add them all at once but until those features are present it simply isn't enough for the people that need them.

    What they do get wrong is being absolutely dismissive to people needing the features and not contributing. Which I think is a) likely wrong exemplified by people with disabilities in their own project and other places they use as examples b) unfair to users as GNOME and GTK explicitly are user facing products made to serve a very wide audience.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on My Accessibility Stack and the future on Wayland in ~comp

    creesch
    Link
    It looks like there is some good news. As others found, part of the issue isn't Wayland but the fact that the Talon dev basically was fed up with Linux in general. Well, as it turns out the guy...

    It looks like there is some good news. As others found, part of the issue isn't Wayland but the fact that the Talon dev basically was fed up with Linux in general. Well, as it turns out the guy who also works on xdotool also decided to have a go at Talon and made some good progress.

    It should be noted that this is the same dev who last year still found that porting xdotool to wayland was not feasible and the whole situation a confusing mess. Apparently he had another go this year and made more progress in finding a way to make it work. He did set up a kickstarter for xdotool for wayland so I do suspect it still involves a lot of work (and I wonder how much of it is working around Wayland or if Wayland also made some things easier in the last year) but it at least gives some hope for the future.

    Edit:

    Apparantly it is a lot of work arounds

    I asked how he's doing it, and he mentioned that right now it's unfortunately a lot of brute-force code: a separate conditional implementation for GNOME / KDE / wlroots + various compositor-specific tweaks. Apparently this requires interfacing with all-of wayland/wlroots protocols, DBus, GNOME's RemoteDesktop protocol, writing a GNOME extension

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    creesch
    Link Parent
    We also have some sponges floating around somewhere I believe. That might the process somewhat easier.

    We also have some sponges floating around somewhere I believe. That might the process somewhat easier.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on My Accessibility Stack and the future on Wayland in ~comp

    creesch
    Link Parent
    It probably says more about any other alternatives than Wayland as is often the case. My rough understanding is that most of the maintainers of X11 simply didn't want to work on it anymore for a...

    Relatedly, every time I hear about Wayland, I become more baffled that this was the chosen replacement windowing system…

    It probably says more about any other alternatives than Wayland as is often the case.

    My rough understanding is that most of the maintainers of X11 simply didn't want to work on it anymore for a lot of valid reasons. They then decided to start anew and "do it right" which is what Wayland eventually became. In the process they over-corrected in a lot of ways causing a lot of issues. Many of those have been addressed since then but not all.

    Since X11 isn't really maintained anymore (there is a fork by one of the maintainers but that has its own problems related to that one maintainer) and Wayland is the only other game in town it makes sense that it is the thing that is being picked up.

    As to why it is the only game in town. It is pretty damn complicated to develop something like Wayland and not a lot of people actually want to invest the time and effort. It is incredibly difficult to find people to contribute to OSS projects and more importantly to have people stick around for the long ride.

    And to be honest, for me as an average user Wayland in its current state is fine besides maybe one or two idiosyncrasies everything works as I would expect. But clearly there is still a bunch of work left to be done on other aspects.

    It is also why I explicitly included this quote by the author of the post

    This big and long-winded post isn't intended to punch down-- I'm genuinely looking for the right people to talk to to solve a very big and difficult problem. If you think you might be one of those people, or know someone who is, please reach out!

    Even if the Wayland creators are somewhat boneheaded in their approach in certain areas. It is incredibly difficult to find people who want and can systematically donate their own time to OSS projects. It is also pretty draining if you are working on a project that is widely used by an insanely diverse group of users all demanding your time and attention. The latter often not done in the nicest way possible.

    13 votes

  9. Comment on My Accessibility Stack and the future on Wayland in ~comp

    creesch
    Link
    This isn't my blog post, it was first shared on lobster.rs and I think it is important to share it to raise awareness. From the authors original post on lobster.rs

    This isn't my blog post, it was first shared on lobster.rs and I think it is important to share it to raise awareness.

    From the authors original post on lobster.rs

    This big and long-winded post isn't intended to punch down-- I'm genuinely looking for the right people to talk to to solve a very big and difficult problem. If you think you might be one of those people, or know someone who is, please reach out!

    6 votes

  11. Comment on What are people's experiences with using Kagi? in ~tech

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Their own website history page As well as blog posts like this one The utilization of it was early on aimed at searching, but very clearly starting from AI itself. It isn't as if they started out...

    Their own website history page

    In the first couple of years (2018 - 2019) Kagi was focused on AI technology,

    As well as blog posts like this one

    Not a lot of people know that Kagi started as Kagi.ai in 2018 and has a long heritage of utilizing AI.

    During those early days, we were passionate about AI's potential, particularly in question-answering and summarization. This was when the Transformer model, which paved the way for modern LLMs (large language models), was just invented in 2017. However, the initial models were small and pale compared to the immense LLMs today.

    In those early days, it took a lot of creativity and innovation to extract the full potential of AI. Today, the power of LLMs such as GPT is so great that "the hottest new programming language is English," as Andrej Karpathy put it. This has democratized the ability to "create magic," allowing even small companies to compete with industry giants, as we demonstrated later in this text.

    The utilization of it was early on aimed at searching, but very clearly starting from AI itself. It isn't as if they started out with search and slowly started adding AI features.

    7 votes

  12. Comment on What are people's experiences with using Kagi? in ~tech

    creesch
    Link Parent
    That's besides the point. I am merely responding to the previous comment by pointing out that Kagi itself explicitly states that AI has been at the core of what they did as it is in the very first...

    That's besides the point. I am merely responding to the previous comment by pointing out that Kagi itself explicitly states that AI has been at the core of what they did as it is in the very first sentence on that page.

    Not just that page as a matter of fact, this blog post is even more definitive on the matter. No matter how you look at it, various forms of AI including LLMs very much are at the core vision of the company.

    Which is not a value or moral statement from me, just something that I consider a fact. How you view that is entirely up to you but I think it is a bit silly to argue over something they themselves are very clear about.

    6 votes

  13. Comment on What are people's experiences with using Kagi? in ~tech

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Their own website disputes this

    I feel like I remember when the AI stuff was added to Kagi, which would mean it hasn’t always been an AI company.

    Their own website disputes this

    In the first couple of years (2018 - 2019) Kagi was focused on AI technology,

    8 votes

  14. Comment on I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit in ~tech

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Finding something useful as a tool in some aspects of your work is different from being forced to use something in all aspects of your work even where it does not fit. I can see why someone...

    Finding something useful as a tool in some aspects of your work is different from being forced to use something in all aspects of your work even where it does not fit.

    I can see why someone working in an environment where it is the latter rather works in one where there is none of that.

    10 votes

  15. Comment on The cost of safetyism - what we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard in ~life

    creesch
    Link Parent
    It could be both, but I also suspect it doesn't matter too much in the end when having children as our own behavior and personalities also impact them. It being genetic might make it a little less...

    We're looking at having children soon, and it makes me consider whether that bit of anxious tendency that she has is genetic in some way, or if it's a result of how she grew up versus how I did.

    It could be both, but I also suspect it doesn't matter too much in the end when having children as our own behavior and personalities also impact them. It being genetic might make it a little less avoidable but even then your approach likely will still need to be similar.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you in ~tech

    creesch
    Link Parent
    The availability of relevant tools and data is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. In fact, I'd say that including tool calling hides a lot of the weaknesses these models still have. Which is...

    The chances of it not doing a tool call to an external data provider to confirm is nil.

    The availability of relevant tools and data is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. In fact, I'd say that including tool calling hides a lot of the weaknesses these models still have. Which is highly relevant as tool calling isn't always available depending on the context where someone might interact with a model. If it is available not all relevant data to verify something might be in there.

    Then there is the fact that even with frontier models tool calling still often leads to, interesting results.

    If we are doing authority based on tokens consumed I might not win by total tokens consumed on a daily basis. But, I might if we look at tokens consumed specifically in relation to external data. I recently posted this comment

    Have you ever looked closely though at what they search for? I recently have had a close look at the various "deep research" options the big three (Anthropic, OpenAI and Google) offer and while on the surface impressive I also found a lot that made me decide against using them for the most part.
    To be clear, none of them are exactly transparant about how they perform searching other than the "research plan" the present upfront the and shitload of sources they show you (which, to be frank, seems to be clever UX/marketing to make it look extra legitimate and impressive). Which is already a worrying sign to me, as you can't audit the process itself properly. But even with the lack of information available on the front-end I can still see enough that worries me. A few examples:

    • "Sources" are taken at face value almost no critical look at the validity of the source, the context it is placed in, etc.
    • A lot of sources I know are legitimate are rarely included while a lot of listicles, low effort "reviews", etc do make the cut.
    • In multiple instances when looking closer at the research plan and the "hints" they show during searching it becomes painfully clear that often enough they start with an answer in mind based on training data and try to validate that rather than actually researching the data itself.
    • Subtly different prompts that by all means should still produce the same factual outcome actually provide wildly different results. This one probably relates to the other points.

    In addition to all of this, I also am 100% convinced* that AI powered search is incredibly expensive, more so than traditional search. In my mind this increased cost eventually will need to be paid by someone, which likely is going to be the user. Since the process is non-transparant I am not confident that the results will not end up being polluted by sponsored deals, etc. There is simply no way in my mind that this is going to end up well for us users.

    * A while ago I have experimented with creating my own deep research flow with the idea that I might be able to do something with local models. To limit costs I used a SearXNG instance for searching, setup playwright for browsing sources. Using an agentic flow with agents making all the various calls and dispatching other agents ended up eating A LOT of tokens. Even when I did switch to a non agentic flow where each step is orchestrated by code calling on LLMs with simple prompts to validate results still ate a metric ton of tokens for the simplest search query. Mind you, this was not even doing actual deep research but only a few simple search queries. Ironically, google models also did seem to have more trouble coming up with good search queries compared to other models.

    Having access to external data does help models but they still manage to come up with outright wrong information. And like I said, depending on very small changes in prompts the outcomes can be drastically different. In fact, even with the same prompt I have observed this. This is with recent models including models like Opus 4.7.

    Even ignoring all of the above. It highly depends on the context, context size and varies other things as well. Even models that supposedly have a 1 million tokens you can already see a degradation in the quality of answers well before you reach that number.

    Which is not directly relevant if you assume the author only asked the one question. But becomes relevant with somewhat longer tasks and conversations. Even if they in theory fall within the context window the quality, even with frontier models, degrades the bigger it gets and there is just no reliable way to tell.

    9 votes

  17. Comment on If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you in ~tech

    creesch
    Link Parent
    That to me feels like over correcting. Also, coming from a culture that is known for being direct, there is a difference between directness and rudeness. They are often confused though and...

    I wonder if it would be better to just switch my writing to direct and brash to the point of borderline rudeness.

    That to me feels like over correcting. Also, coming from a culture that is known for being direct, there is a difference between directness and rudeness. They are often confused though and sometimes directness is used as an excuse to just be rude.

    Having said that, not being overly verbose is generally a good thing to aim for I think (something I do struggle with tbh).

    Interestingly enough I have started to value little mistakes and idiosyncrasies in text as tells that it likely has been written by a human.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Yeah makes sense, previous season I had to basically spawn proof all the things except for the platform up top. The platform itself was dry to begin with to allow the creaking to spawn with a...

    I nametagged the creaking so that I wouldn't have to worry about them spawning in a predictable place every night.

    Yeah makes sense, previous season I had to basically spawn proof all the things except for the platform up top. The platform itself was dry to begin with to allow the creaking to spawn with a water flowing in based on a timer to get them in the wacking chamber.

    Your solution simplifies it a ton :)

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Huh, do creaking now spawn during day? Edit: I see, you named the creaking. Still only works at night according to the signs? Edit2: I like it! Much more compact than the one I came up with last...

    Huh, do creaking now spawn during day?

    Edit: I see, you named the creaking. Still only works at night according to the signs?

    Edit2: I like it! Much more compact than the one I came up with last season.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Tildes Minecraft Weekly in ~games

    creesch
    Link Parent
    Honesty didn't test it more than just a little. From what I could tell everything was relatively responsive. Using it to project images and videos in game could be a novel idea. Edit: Just...

    Honesty didn't test it more than just a little. From what I could tell everything was relatively responsive. Using it to project images and videos in game could be a novel idea.

    Edit: Just remembered also having seen in game webbrowser mods at some point. Those might be a better match for this sort of thing?

    4 votes