Zink
@Zink@programming.dev
- Comment on Study reveals that dark web users show significantly higher levels of depression, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and digital self-harm compared to surface web users 15 hours ago:
I wonder if this is less of a link between those things and the dark web, and more of a link between the mental issues and being beyond terminally online and over-informed about all the most horrible shit out there.
- Comment on Why Are New Appliances So Bad? [41:02] 15 hours ago:
I don’t keep up on the appliance world very much, but for many years I have been under the impression that when replacing one it’s always a good call to NOT get the Samsung.
I have literally never seen reason to doubt that rule.
I’m actually pretty happy with my current appliances, but I don’t stick all to one brand and I stick with the simpler cheaper designs. If paying for the next higher tier brings higher build quality or upgrades the core function’s power/capacity, then I’ll probably go for it.
- Comment on Why Are New Appliances So Bad? [41:02] 15 hours ago:
From Wikipedia, here is the article snippet that originated the term.
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two-sided market”, where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
- Comment on Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service 2 days ago:
Alright fine, I can tolerate the little ✨AI ✨ sparkles in my M365 webpages a while longer if it means more kaboom at the end.
- Comment on Chasing the Elephant 3 days ago:
I wonder if it’s a white balance thing, as in the setting you’d see on a camera or in a post processing tool.
For instance, consider that “soft” or “warm” light bulbs (say 3000K and below) are common in cozy indoor areas. They cast a much more yellow color of light compared with a daylight bulb or actual daylight, which will look very blue in comparison.
It’s like the model detected that the image was people in a living room and it applied a warm white balance to the whole picture because most images of a family in the living room have warm lighting globally.
But since it is a machine and apparently has not yet been explicitly taught that comics generally have bright colors and no strange tints, then it does not adjust accordingly.
I wonder if that is even giving it too much credit. Maybe it’s just the deterioration from all the iterations of garbage in, garbage out.
- Comment on Infosys co-founder once again calls for longer than 70-hour weeks - and no, he's not joking 5 days ago:
You just aren’t thinking like a billionaire, man. What you do is get the two people anyway, and still force the 70 hour work week.
Your job is not to find a reasonable steady state of operation. Your job is to exploit the resources before you (even the ones with emotions and families) to extract value for the shareholders in the most efficient way possible, before somebody even more evil and clever than you figures out a better way and we direct future fresh meat to his meat grinder instead of yours.
- Comment on *confused flatfish noises* 5 days ago:
Turtles are kind of in between with their wedge-shaped heads. They need the awareness to hide from predators, but some of them are also predators themselves or they at least snap at fruits and veggies to eat them.
Here’s my tortoise doing his best disappointed-in-you baby yoda:
And here’s the yellow belly slider locking target on to some shrimp.
But it sounds like the rules aren’t as consistent in the water, judging from other comments. Even something like an alligator snapping turtle’s eyes are no further forward than these pics.
- Comment on Feeding my family alone is expensive. I can't afford to feed all of y'all. 6 days ago:
Thank you, GiantChickDicks, for making this Thanksgiving even more wholesome.
And I completely agree. I could see myself as that person getting immense fulfillment from creating a feast for my loved ones. I love cooking even for myself. Unfortunately(/s) I have long held the position of the fun dad and uncle, and that is where my fulfillment lies. I’m the one that keeps all the kids in the other room playing games so they leave the other adults alone.
But when my mom calls down that it’s time for certain kids to help with certain dishes, they go running out of the room to help!
- Comment on Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.” 1 week ago:
So the space obsessed man-child generated his own stupid encyclopedia, and for this generous all-giving knowledge resource he chooses a stylized BLACK HOLE for the logo.
It feels like the nerd equivalent to that quote about how the anti-semite arguing in bad faith enjoys seeing others frustrated by their hypocrisy. Here lemme just find that pasta…
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Jean-Paul Sartre
- Comment on RAM is so expensive that stores are selling it at market prices 1 week ago:
Yeah the “shopping around” aspect isn’t even close these days. I remember ~25 years ago using price aggregator sites to pick up individual PC parts from all different websites.
Today the situation is flipped. It isn’t difficult to find a really good price. If you buy all your parts from the same retailer, you’ll be way closer to the minmaxed optimal price than in the past.
The problem is that right now the “good” prices are crazy.
- Comment on MAGA, splitting hairs. 1 week ago:
I am 100% in favor of pushing the distinction.
Let’s get the pedophiles treatment or therapy or whatever helps them while they continue to not hurt anybody while contributing to society.
Let’s get the child rapists 3 hots and a cot with concrete walls all around.
- Comment on Maybe they should double down and blame trans pedophiles. 2 weeks ago:
I can totally see conservatives processing it that way.
You know how they are always looking back to the good old days when they may have had it worse but people unlike them had it a LOT worse? Well if you keep going back as far as they want to take things, to being ruled by nobles or royal families, taking a wife in her teen years was absolutely nothing. And true servants of God need not be limited by the laws of man or some bullshit.
Consenting adult males, however, have penises and cannot make babies. So it is an affront to fragile conservative sensibilities as well as fragile conservative gods.
- Comment on Downdetector is down 2 weeks ago:
impossible! I checked!
- Comment on Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin 3 weeks ago:
Oh I’m well aware, that’s why I threw in the part about needing to be utilized. Because even if the engineers are good with their finished product, some VP will eventually ask their director why the team’s output has dropped or why they have so many people for so little work.
I’m an engineer working on a new product right now. Fortunately we’re a small outfit with niche customers.
- Comment on Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change massively, gets enormous backlash - Neowin 3 weeks ago:
That’s one thing I love about FOSS, that the only stakeholders are the devs and the users. The goal is to make software that’s good at what it does.
When it comes to any tech company’s product, you not only have all the stakeholders that corrupt the end product, but you have giant teams of marketers, designers, engineers, and managers that need to constantly justify their existence and or be efficiently utilized at all times.
Honestly it’s like lesser version of enshittification, the tendency of commercial products to always be changing things.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 3 weeks ago:
Well, like any decent VR game there are settings to help with that. I’m pretty sure I used the teleportation movement the whole time even once I was used to it and didn’t get nauseated.
Getting used to it was a huge factor on its own. Back then, I had been playing so much VR that in the flying game Ultrawings (think pilotwings for VR) I worked my way up to where I was flying the stunt plane with full FOV and no anti-nausea measures enabled.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 3 weeks ago:
That whole article reads like he was a reasonably intelligent person who was born into a christian family. So he’s been conditioned to automatically see homosexuality as bad, and been educated in writing eloquent arguments to support his position, but he’s just aware enough to not take a stand and actually say what he thinks because that would get him in trouble.
Even just considering your snippet:
I’m pretty sure there are genetic dispositions towards different kinds of sexual behaviors and patterns—just as there are genetic dispositions towards such things as alcoholism, racism, elitism, etc.
This is just an opinion and the logic seems sensible. But why make the comparison to only negative traits and vices?
A genetic predisposition towards homosexuality does not make homosexuality a ‘good’ or a ‘right,’ or even ‘okay’ for some people.
Stating the obvious then referring to 3rd party opinions. Doesn’t seem to do much other than keep up the negative tone.
Just as with every other human behavior, a wider worldview must be used to judge the righteousness of a human action or behavior—including acting on homosexual tendencies.
Whoa, I agree! And using my view of the world and society at large I hereby judge that we need to lay the fuck off of people who act on their homosexual tendencies and focus on actual problems! I wonder if the author can say the same.
Also, I just want to point out and give a “fuck that” to the heavy focus on “choosing” and “acting” rather than simply existing. In my experience that is a very common step in the short process of dehumanizing somebody and mentally writing off their concerns and rights.
Dehumanizing somebody for a trait they were born with is obviously doable, but it is still a tougher sell for some people than dehumanizing a person for an intentional act. Even if that act didn’t hurt anybody or anything.
I’ll leave the whole train of thought of “how can you punish people for acting like the thing they were born as” as an exercise for the reader.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 3 weeks ago:
If there was one organization with the motive and resources to help develop an open phone hardware platform, Valve sure seems like a good contender.
C’mon Gabe, make a name for yourself in computer history. Secure a place in the history books next to Torvalds and Stallman rather than Gates/Jobs/Zuck types.
Make “steam compatible phone” become the new “IBM compatible PC”!
- Comment on xkcd #3167: Car Size 3 weeks ago:
That has traffic-flipping vibes of the upgraded Agency Supercar from the game Crackdown. I like.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 3 weeks ago:
When I look at this announcement, the hardware is very exciting, for sure. But it is Valve’s dedication to Linux that really has me smiling. I don’t see three hardware devices to buy. I see two big proclamations for which the hardware is the message:
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SteamOS on desktop! It seemed inevitable but it’s still great to see.
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STEAM VR USING LINUX AS ITS TARGET PLATFORM?!?!?
I will grant that it’s very possible I buy all three pieces of the hardware, even though I like building my own PCs. I will also grant that Valve’s support for linux probably would not be what it is without the enshittification of Microsoft’s ecosystem. But in this world I’m gonna go ahead and accept the imperfect good news.
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- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 3 weeks ago:
House of the Dying Sun is a space sim with a strategic map view in addition to piloting a fighter yourself.
It is so good in VR.
- Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026] 3 weeks ago:
My 200 hour playthrough of Skyrim VR back in 2019 justified my headset purchase and GPU upgrade (gtx 1080, oooh, aaah) all by itself.
- Comment on Learning to drive 3 weeks ago:
You rest your thumbs atop the 9/3 spokes, right in the corner where they meet the wheel. You grab the wheel starting from that position and you’ve got a good solid 9/3 grip across the equator of the wheel for safety and/or performance.
Your distance from the steering wheel matters a lot too. To check that you can put your arms straight out in front of you while in your normal position. Your wrists should touch the top of the wheel with your arms outstretched like that.
I heard these tips from some professional driver on a TV show. I think it might have been Tiff Needel on Fifth Gear.
- Comment on Goodnight sweet prince 3 weeks ago:
Yep, and we recently switched out our old “air fryer” to replace it with a toaster oven that has convection and an air frying mode. But it can do toaster oven stuff like bake and broil pretty well, and with a wider tray than any air fryer basket.
Our big oven is pretty good too. It has a convection fan and various modes and whatnot. The air frying toaster oven literally duplicates functions it already gives us, but it’s worth taking up a large kitchen gadget spot just for the speed and efficiency including sometimes not heating up the house. (I’m in the US, air fryers and toaster ovens use 120V 15A outlets while the oven is on 240V 30+A.)
- Comment on She strongly disagrees 3 weeks ago:
I think you guys may be using different definitions of what it means to act like a christian. If you disagree on that then you’ll just keep arguing past each other.
When you refer to acting like a christian that seems to mean acting christ-like, or at least striving to, which makes sense.
The other usage I’m seeing, and which is probably more prevalent in societal/political discussions, is that being like a christian means being lily the actual group of humans who use that label, which often has nothing to do with christ-likedness other than in name.
- Comment on U.S. Tech Layoffs Hit Two-Decade High in October 3 weeks ago:
The juniors on my team at work have been productive as hell lately while we olds ponder over the more obscure runes.
- Comment on No Way 3 weeks ago:
I love this one because his voice comes through SO clearly when I read the text.
- Comment on No Way 3 weeks ago:
please tell me it says HEE on the back!
- Comment on Is Fast Charging Killing the Battery? A 2-Year Test on 40 Phones 3 weeks ago:
In a previous job I once evaluated some returned product that wasn’t having the best battery life or wasn’t working right. It was specialized expensive equipment that used regular alkaline batteries.
TL;DR: ordinary batteries can have negative voltage if you don’t give a fuck and just mix your old and new ones in a drawer before you put them into your high-cost life-saving equipment.
- Comment on FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Infamous Archive.is Site 3 weeks ago:
Auto correct.
They meant to say suck a fuck, not fuck a duck.
