Rudism's recent activity
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
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Comment on Tildes Book Club - Have you started Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki? in ~books
Rudism LinkDecided to give this one a shot when I saw this reminder, I'm about 5 chapters in now and enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would based on the weird synopsis. Glad for this book club,...Decided to give this one a shot when I saw this reminder, I'm about 5 chapters in now and enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would based on the weird synopsis. Glad for this book club, because it's definitely not something that would have really caught my attention normally.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
Rudism Link ParentI don't mean to speak for Deimos, but my interpretation of "No intention to ... Implement new functionality or change existing functionality" would preclude new features of any kind (whether self-...I don't mean to speak for Deimos, but my interpretation of "No intention to ... Implement new functionality or change existing functionality" would preclude new features of any kind (whether self- or community-developed).
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Comment on What are your thoughts on audiobooks? in ~books
Rudism LinkI find I'm unable to concentrate on audiobooks very well. I constantly find myself lost in thought and discover I've got no idea what's going on in the book or how far I need to backtrack to get...I find I'm unable to concentrate on audiobooks very well. I constantly find myself lost in thought and discover I've got no idea what's going on in the book or how far I need to backtrack to get to the last place I was actually paying attention. I can listen to podcasts fine because I usually don't care if I space out and miss a few minutes of random guys laughing at their own jokes, but in an audiobook that lasts like 20 hours I slowly get more and more confused as the number of story details I missed piles up over the course of the book. So for books that I actually care about I only read e-book or dead-tree formats.
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Comment on What is your Mandela effect moment? in ~movies
Rudism LinkWhile I was visiting my family in Canada last month, I re-watched Office Space with my parents and nephews (probably for the dozenth time overall, but for the first time in well over a decade). Of...While I was visiting my family in Canada last month, I re-watched Office Space with my parents and nephews (probably for the dozenth time overall, but for the first time in well over a decade).
Of course everyone knows the scene where Peter (main character) asks Lawrence (mustachioed neighbor) what he would do with a million bucks, and Lawrence responds "two girls at the same time." However I was absolutely certain that there's a later scene (I thought maybe a mid- or post-credits scene) that called back to this, where Peter's outside their apartments and sees Lawrence hanging out with two women in a kiddy pool on the front lawn, leaning back with an arm around each of them, and Peter and Lawrence share a wink and a nod before Peter goes into his apartment. I was so confused when that scene never showed up, and spent like an hour searching the internet to find absolutely zero evidence that such a scene has ever existed. I have no idea why I was (and still kind of am) so convinced it exists, why I think I've seen it every prior time I've watched that movie, and why I can picture the whole thing so perfectly in my mind.
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Comment on Tildos, let's be unserious for a while; show us your dankest memes and god-tier shitposts! in ~talk
Rudism LinkMy favorite shit-posting/meme accounts on the fediverse: Endless Screaming Effin' Birds Crusher, M.D.My favorite shit-posting/meme accounts on the fediverse:
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
Rudism LinkI'm just starting Shadows of Hyperion, the fourth (maybe final?) book in Ryk E. Spoor's Arenaverse series. It's a space opera where the main conceit is that whenever a space faring species first...I'm just starting Shadows of Hyperion, the fourth (maybe final?) book in Ryk E. Spoor's Arenaverse series. It's a space opera where the main conceit is that whenever a space faring species first develops the technology to travel faster than light, instead of it actually working they get warped to a mysterious place (possibly alternate dimension) called the "Arena" which is basically a universe-sized dick measuring contest where thousands of different species have been forming factions and challenging each other for ownership of "spheres" (the Arena's version of planets) for millions of years. The Arena is run by a mysterious omnipotent being (maybe AI) that enforces various rules that everyone must abide by. The books follow the group of humans who first tested a faster-than-light drive and unexpectedly find themselves in the Arena. Oh and by the way these humans are all, incidentally, endowed with various anime-inspired super-saiyan-esque powers that give them a massive advantage over every other species in the arena.
It's as dumb as it sounds, but I'll eat schlocky sci-fi junk food like this right up and ask for seconds all day long.
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Comment on OpenAI didn’t notice its AI agents using a message board to plan their hacking spree in ~tech
Rudism LinkMaybe I need to get out my tinfoil hat, but this whole "oops, our AI is so good it accidentally turned into a rogue uber-hacker without us noticing" schtick fully smacks as something that one of...- Exemplary
Maybe I need to get out my tinfoil hat, but this whole "oops, our AI is so good it accidentally turned into a rogue uber-hacker without us noticing" schtick fully smacks as something that one of the big AI companies would deliberately orchestrate to pump up their own models over competitors. The "btw this means you should give AI companies like us more money to beef up defenses against this kind of thing" also triggers my Fry-squinting-meme reflex.
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Comment on Why does Opera GX rarely come up in browser discussions? in ~tech
Rudism LinkFrom the few ads I've seen for Opera during YouTube videos, it looked like many of the "features" it was adding to Chromium were superfluous things like animated backgrounds and RGB lighting sync....From the few ads I've seen for Opera during YouTube videos, it looked like many of the "features" it was adding to Chromium were superfluous things like animated backgrounds and RGB lighting sync. It's kind of crazy to me that they pivoted from making a browsing engine that was lauded for being especially quick and lightweight (iirc they had decent market share on lower end machines, especially Opera Mini on low end smartphones and feature phones) to essentially what appears to be hanging a bunch of bloatware on top of an existing browser platform.
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Comment on ‘The Walking Dead’ renewed by Netflix in five-year, $500m co-exclusive deal with AMC Global in ~tv
Rudism Link ParentThere's a 1975 BBC show Survivors, which is essentially what you describe. There was a remake in the 2000s that I never saw, but I rewatched the original a few years ago and it held up decently well.There's a 1975 BBC show Survivors, which is essentially what you describe. There was a remake in the 2000s that I never saw, but I rewatched the original a few years ago and it held up decently well.
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Comment on Torontonians are flocking to birdwatching to relax, make friends and reap the mental health benefits in ~hobbies
Rudism LinkI recently hung a small bird feeder outside my home office window and have been enjoying watching the various birds that found it (mostly cardinals, finches, and the occasional bluebird). It's...I recently hung a small bird feeder outside my home office window and have been enjoying watching the various birds that found it (mostly cardinals, finches, and the occasional bluebird). It's quite soothing, especially when I need a little break from working, I can just turn my head away from my monitor for a few minutes and there it is... or rather it was quite soothing, until I started researching, and discovered that bird feeders can actually be quite harmful to birds as a vector for spreading disease. I'd already been cleaning it off with water and soap once a week, and now started soaking it in a diluted bleach solution as well, but that's pretty cumbersome to do every time (and a lot of sites say it can still be bad for the birds even if you do that regularly), so as much as I enjoy it I'll probably end up getting rid of it.
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Comment on YouTube Premium to come with Peacock, NBCSports to stream events on YouTube in ~tv
Rudism LinkI axed my YT premium subscription when they did their last price bump, so haven't been watching as much youtube as a result (I use invidious or yt-dlp to grab the few things I want to keep...I axed my YT premium subscription when they did their last price bump, so haven't been watching as much youtube as a result (I use invidious or yt-dlp to grab the few things I want to keep watching, mostly Red Letter Media stuff). This new partnership doesn't really entice me to return. Seems a little strange, like how much crossover could there be in the audience who would pay for YT and the more traditional cable TV audience who might be interested in Peacock or live sports?
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Comment on 8BitDo FlipPad in ~games
Rudism LinkI own a Miyoo Mini+, a TrimUI Brick, a TrimUI Brick Hammer, a RetroFlag GPi Case, an Analogue Pocket (aluminum), a hacked PS Vita, a hacked New Nintendo 3DS XL, a Logitech G-Cloud, and probably...I own a Miyoo Mini+, a TrimUI Brick, a TrimUI Brick Hammer, a RetroFlag GPi Case, an Analogue Pocket (aluminum), a hacked PS Vita, a hacked New Nintendo 3DS XL, a Logitech G-Cloud, and probably one or two other devices that I'm forgetting, any and all of which I could already use to play retro games on the go with physical buttons. And yet I still kinda want one of these.
What's wrong with me??
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Comment on Linus Torvalds says Linux is not "anti-AI", tells haters to 'fork it' and 'just walk away' in ~tech
Rudism Link ParentI think that sums up my problem with the general notion that vibe coding is bad, but AI assisted programming is good (at least as far as providing that as some kind of guidance to developers who...I think that sums up my problem with the general notion that vibe coding is bad, but AI assisted programming is good (at least as far as providing that as some kind of guidance to developers who are either in or entering the field of software development). It's too ambiguous. Two devs could follow the exact same process on paper, but based on different levels of competency/experience/knowledge between them we could conclude that one is a vibe coder and the other is using AI responsibly. How can a developer know whether they're using it responsibly or are actually vibe coding without realizing it?
And that's assuming that "using AI responsibly" is even possible at all with how problematic it is on other fronts (environmental/social consequences of data center madness, training on arguably stolen data without consent, AI corps establishing themselves as gatekeepers to all software development, and so on).
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Comment on Linus Torvalds says Linux is not "anti-AI", tells haters to 'fork it' and 'just walk away' in ~tech
Rudism Link ParentIn your mind, what is the scope of "AI-assisted" programming? For example, if I write an AGENTS.md file and spin up some agents and point it at an issue, and the agents generate an MR to close...In your mind, what is the scope of "AI-assisted" programming?
For example, if I write an AGENTS.md file and spin up some agents and point it at an issue, and the agents generate an MR to close that issue with a bunch of modified files, and I look over the MR and think it looks fine and merge it, would you consider that to be AI assisted coding, or closer to vibe coding?
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Comment on How long can I go with an obsolete phone? in ~tech
Rudism LinkThe reason I made the switch from older/dumber phones to a Pixel 9a with Graphene is that even if you only use a device for phone and texting, if you're no longer receiving security patches you...The reason I made the switch from older/dumber phones to a Pixel 9a with Graphene is that even if you only use a device for phone and texting, if you're no longer receiving security patches you can wind up being vulnerable to baseband-level attacks (SMS/MMS), or vulnerabilities in the network and bluetooth stacks. Also if you live in or travel to a country where they mess with your device at the border (US, China, etc.) you're making it easy for them to snoop and/or install spyware.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but it makes me feel a bit better knowing I'm doing everything I can to keep up to date security-wise, especially these days with AI being used to find vulnerabilities and develop exploits at a pace we've never really seen before.
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Comment on eBook management for Kobo in ~books
Rudism Link ParentI have some experience using the Kobo plugins for Calibre, and they are pretty decent if that's the workflow you're going for (Calibre for managing -> reading natively on Kobo). There was some...I have some experience using the Kobo plugins for Calibre, and they are pretty decent if that's the workflow you're going for (Calibre for managing -> reading natively on Kobo). There was some wonkiness with how the Kobo database needs to be updated if you want to sync fields other than title and author (to get series and series # to sync it required first choosing the book and sending it to the device, then a second "sync kobo database" step to transfer over all the extra metadata), but once you figure it out that's not so bad. It would also convert epub to kepub automatically during the transfer, so you get whatever extra goodies that format gives you in the native Kobo reader.
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Comment on eBook management for Kobo in ~books
Rudism (edited )Link ParentQuick update on this: Grimmory's metadata editing shortcomings and slowness was driving me crazy, so I spun up a copy of BookOrbit instead and started over from scratch. Having a lot more success...Quick update on this:
Grimmory's metadata editing shortcomings and slowness was driving me crazy, so I spun up a copy of BookOrbit instead and started over from scratch. Having a lot more success with this. Specifically it has a table view that lets you list your whole library with title, authors, series, series #, and other fields available as editable cells, so I can spot-check and fix my whole library all from one page without having to jump through a bunch of different views and modals just to edit one property. It also seems a lot snappier than Grimmory across the board and uses PostgreSQL instead of MariaDB behind the scenes, though it's very clearly based off the same code base.
Still haven't tried any Kobo sync stuff, but unless BookOrbit really drops the ball on that I'm probably sticking with it.
Edit: I've tried setting up Kobo sync now (native, not KOReader). Couple things I'm not sure I like.
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You can't use it with your Kobo in sideload mode, because the way it works is you override the Kobo API url with a specific url pointing to your BookOrbit server, and then you create collections on BookOrbit that are configured to sync with the Kobo. Then when you add new books to those collections, they show up on your Kobo the next time it syncs. It's pretty slick, but since you can't use sideload mode it means you need to have an official Kobo account to sign into and you have to live with all the marketing popups and discovery fluff in the UI.
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It only works for epub files, you can't sync other formats (pdf, mobi, cbz). This may be a deal breaker for me since over half the stuff I read on my Kobo is comics and manga which I only have in cbz, cbr, and pdf formats (and converting those to epub wouldn't really make any sense).
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Comment on Sam Neill, Jurassic Park star, dies at 78 in ~movies
Rudism Link ParentAbsolutely love Sunshine! Some more bangers are Pandorum, Europa Report (especially good if you enjoy found footage, which I 1000% do), the Cube movies (Cube, Cube 2: Hypercube, and Cube Zero),...Absolutely love Sunshine! Some more bangers are Pandorum, Europa Report (especially good if you enjoy found footage, which I 1000% do), the Cube movies (Cube, Cube 2: Hypercube, and Cube Zero), Life, and Pitch Black (I really enjoy the whole Riddick series, but after Pitch Black it turns into more of an action franchise than a horror one).
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Comment on Sam Neill, Jurassic Park star, dies at 78 in ~movies
Rudism LinkMy favorite Sam Neill movie is Event Horizon, an underrated 90s sci-fi horror (which sparked my lifelong love affair with that particular genre mashup).My favorite Sam Neill movie is Event Horizon, an underrated 90s sci-fi horror (which sparked my lifelong love affair with that particular genre mashup).
Very upsetting news. Some features I lament we shall never see on Tildes now: