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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • The issue isn’t whether you can get a good results or not. The issue is the skills you are outsourcing to a proprietary tool, skills that you will never learn or forget. Getting information out of documentation, designing an architecture, understanding and replicating an algorithm, etc.

    You will eventually start struggling with critical thinking, there are already studies about that.

    Of course, if you use it in moderation and don’t rely on LLMs too much, you should be ok.

    But how did that work for everyone with short-form content and social networks in the last ten years? How is your attention span doing? Surely we all have managed to take short-form content in moderation, since we knew the risks to our attention span, right?


  • I’ve switched to vim on a whim few months ago, and it still is a pretty fun and satisfying experience. I couldn’t get LazyVim to properly work on our Unity project, since the LSP can’t handle the hundreds of projects it generates, but IdeaVim in Rider works pretty much the same, as far as the movements are considered.

    However, the important thing is that I said fun and satisfying, not faster and efficient. I still make mistakes, I have to look into a keybind reference sheet every time I want to do something I’m sure has to have a special keybind but I’ve forgotten which one it is, but once you do that it feels good.

    Slowly but surely learning new stuff, getting the hang of some motions you use often, not having to reach for your mouse, all of that feels good. It’s still no way near the speed or efficiency of me just clicking the damn mouse, instead of fumbling around with VIM modes, undoing random actions because I missed one important key and now half of my text is gone, or just remembering that your clipboards get overridden by almost any action unless you do it differently.

    So, if you want to get efficient and quicker in your programming, I highly recommend checking the keybind section of your IDE, and learning the few important keybinds it has, such as jump to next function/next parameter, search symbols, and the like. That will make you more efficient.

    If, on the other hand, you want your editing to be a skill you can slowly continue mastering, eventually (after years of use) min-maxing, but always having some cool new things to learn that will feel good, them vim is pretty nice for that.

    Just don’t expect it will make you faster or more efficient.





  • I’m hodsting my own Matrix server with WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord (you don’t need a bot for that, you can just share your login with the bridge) and Messenger bridge. I have all my IMs in one app, don’t have to install spyware on my phone, and I can make bots that troll annoying people that message me on any platform.

    Hosting it was super simple, thanks to the Ansible project that’s extremely robust and well done, I literally just got a hosting, domain amd changed like 5 config values to enable the bridges I wanted, gave it an IP and ssh key, and ran it. And if I need to update, I literally “just update” (it’s all wrapped up into “just” tool), and it eve handles cases where I didn’t update for a while, failing graciously and telling me what I need to do maually, usually just rename some config values.

    I wholly recommend it. You probably wont convince your friends to switch from <insert app here>, and this is the best compromise.

    I’m using a small instance on Hetzner, for 6$ a month. You could in theory get a free oracle cloud instance for it, but I didn’t manage to get one.

    And you can easily share it with anyone interrested, make them an account, so they can also consolidate their DMs. I’m sharing it with a few friends and colleagues.


  • I highly recommend reading Digital Minimalism, which deals with exactly what you are talking about. It’s a great and inspiring read, even if you don’t actually go through with it.

    From what I remember, it mostly talks about how to approach any kind of technology as a tool, though a pretty simple process - honestly think about what your goal is (networking, getting information about new topics, keeping up to date on events…), and properly decide whether the technology is actually The Best way how to do it, while minimalizing any drawbacks.

    Some examples I remember are:

    • I have to use social networks to stay in touch with my friends and family. - Is that really the best way? Isn’t it better to make sure to visit or call them regularly, so they can tell you what they have been up to, instead of you passively seeing it from soulless posts? If your goal is to have a meaningful connection with them, is chatting in a group-chat the best way and better than talking less often, but in person?
    • I have to stay up-to-date on news. - Is endlessly scrolling through clickbait articles for hours the best use of your time? Wouldn’t just subscribing to a physical newspaper/journal, that you get to read every day/week/month, accomplish the same thing while also saving you an immense amount of time?
    • I need to have a smartphone so I can be reached at any time. - Do you need to have a smartphone for that? Isn’t dumb phone way better, since you don’t get distracted with other stuff? And are you sure that you have to reply immediately, and it won’t wait until the evening? Will setting up regular 30 minutes per day, to check and answer your personal mails/IMs be sufficient, and if someone needs to reach you immediately, they can always call you.

    Most of the arguments in the book were thought-provoking, and from what I’ve tried implementing, it has made my life a lot better. For example, switching my phone to a dumb phone (and carrying a powered off smarthphone that I can make a hotpost for, if I really need an app for something) made my away-from-computer life a lot better and peacful, and it was really easy to get used to that. Once you start considering anything you do on a computer from the pragmatic point of view, and ask yourself what your goal is, and if there isn’t a better way - the answer usually is yes, there is.


  • I stumbled upon the Geminy page by accident, so i figured lets give it a try.

    I asked him in czech if he can also generate pictures. He said sure, and gave me examples about what to ask him.

    So I asked him, again in czech, to generate a cat drinking a beer at a party.

    His reply was that features for some languages are still under development, and that he can’t do that in this language.

    So I asked him in english.

    I can’t create images for you yet, but I can still find images from the web.

    Ok, so I asked if he can find me the picture on the web, then.

    I’m sorry, but I can’t provide images of a cat drinking beer. Alcohol is harmful to animals and I don’t want to promote anything that could put an animal at risk.

    Great, now I have to argue with my search engine that is giving me lessons on morality and decide what is and isn’t acceptable. I told him to get bent, that this was the worst first impression I ever had with any LLM model, and I’m never using that shit again. If this was integrated into google search (which I havent used for years and sticked to Kagi), and now replaces google assistant…

    Good, that’s what people get for sticking with google. It brings me joy to see Google dig it’s own grave with such success.