Al.

I am honestly rapidly beginning to hate LLM stuff (I won't call it 'AI' anymore and yes I'm the annoying person who will drag a conversation to a halt to correct someone). 

It's empowering the worst people to make the worst "content".  The whole "prompt artist" label makes me want to punch someone.  Just people with zero artistic talent somehow convinced they're geniuses now.  The images rarely don't look like trash with some sort of tell tale mistake in them.  Check out this crap from recent Dublin Riots (I'll get around to writing something about that soon).

That's the images.  I honestly haven't bothered with the audio myself. I do know it's being used to defraud old people and you'll need to setup some sort of safe word with your family now so that's cool.

When dealing with text it's wordy and unnatural.  The information frequently incorrect.

I'm not saying there's no worth in LLMs. I've tried my best to take shortcuts using them (to the point ChatGPT have told me I've exceeded my trial?).

One thing I did use it for semi successfully was a request to give me 16 different hex colour codes for use to distinguish elements in a diagram. 12 we're good. 2 were identical. One was white and the other black. Still it saved me some time in digging out codes for that purpose. 

I've tried things like have it build me Docker config and it usually can get me 80% of the way to what I want.  It becomes questionable if this is better than traditional RTFM as you can waste as much time trying to fix that last 20%.

It's flat out lied to me about router commands.

It'll never tell you something can't be done. Just take a guess like an overconfident intern.

I'm sure it'll get better but it seems the hype cycle is overblown for the current capabilities versus traditional approaches with a lot of looking the other way of the flaws.  It's very speculative at this point (recent ChatGPT drama saying they're on the verge of AGI pushing the belief we're days away from something crazy).  It says a lot there's a lot of crypto heads pushing it as the next big thing.  Oh yeh it fucks the environment much like NFTs did.

If I could think of a single action by the new government that'll piss you off the most it would probably be this.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67540190

I expect you canvasing door to door for the good guys in the future.

Before XBOX a rope swing was as good as it got until someone tried to home brew cider that exploded.

The last time you promised/threatened this Covid happened so I am selling my stocks and ordering toilet paper.   I'd offer to put you up but we live in a glorified portacabin with one real bedroom we rather like to sleep in ourselves.

Peak "I'm 19" energy there.  The trifecta of Tool,Korn and NIN.  Seems to be before my litestep era. Napster in the shortcuts. Netscape Navigator.  A single mb of free RAM (out of a total of 128mb I believe). Pointless firewall.  Kaspersky, mIRC, Agent, ICQ. 

All I really miss is the energy I had to fuck with computers.  I want to go back to when I'd spend hours editing icons and registry entries and then still have many more where I'd actually play games and every new game felt special instead of a chore.  It's 11am on Sunday and I've mostly just browsed the internet and achieved nothing. I should have had a whole new slew of edgy icons rolled out on my desktop by now.

From what I have heard (and backed up with the current frequency of boosters to my elderly parents) the vaccines drop off efficacy after about 3 months so keep topped up or just keep avoiding people.

I was at a convention a couple weeks ago.  I grabbed my fifth (?) vaccine shot a week before.  Ireland changed their rules so that under 50s now have a convenient "if you want it before we actively offer it just ask for it" system I took advantage of.  One of the lads who was there with me was coughing away but I didn't think too much of it (he's had health problems and is a frequent cougher).  Turned out it was Covid but I somehow Neo'd my way into dodging the bullets.  The fresh dose of vaccine maybe had something to do with it as well.  Still plenty of opportunities to get Covid 2 - The New Batch including the annual stuff everyone in the office for a couple of days in the middle of cold and flu season scheduled for next week.

Been trying to convince herself to allow us to watch it, most recently today.  The trailer intrigued her but also terrified her.  Not sure if I want to end up watching it on my own late at night.

So go on.. Spill the beans.. what did you go with?

This is a great YouTube channel.

https://youtube.com/@JeremyParish

Term limits not being long enough to do anything is a problem but it probably stops too much damage happening as well. 

Go look at the UK which has had 13 years of Tories and it's a miserable hell hole of nasty politicians scape goating disabled people as scroungers.

Ireland has had some form of Fine Gael for over a decade and Fianna Fail before that, 2 parties of landlords who refused to invest in housing and outsourced public services to private companies (who give them backhanders) leaving us at the mercy of those companies with no public infrastructure to rely on.  The Greens have taken a huge reputational hit for assisting them in forming this government and agreeing to a lot of their shit (like removing no fault eviction bans implemented during COVID) but you can assume they've tempered some of the policies under threat of collapsing the government early (maybe). As elections come close and the polls show they're going to be fucked out all involved are starting to look to blame the usual groups.

Not taking an interest when one side will happily demonise certain types of people's rights to live in order to stay in power is a political statement (that you're ok with that).  You probably should take an interest.  I wasn't joking about the problems getting blamed on the immigrants but you'll probably be fine as you're the "right" sort of immigrant.  For now.  Maybe your loved ones are the "right" sort of people too... For now.

I replaced you with AI.   Some of these movies might just be made up by it and I have seen maybe two of them. Also it suggested Unearthed Frights as the name but come on.. Unearthed De-Frights is right there!

Horror Movie Festival - Unearthed Frights

Day 1: Classic Chills
Location: The Haunted Theater

4:00 PM: Festival Opening
   - Welcome speech and introduction

4:30 PM: "Carnival of Souls" (1962)
   - Directed by Herk Harvey
   - A cult classic that explores the eerie world of the living dead.

7:00 PM: "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" (1971)
   - Directed by John D. Hancock
   - A psychological horror that will send shivers down your spine.

9:00 PM: "Messiah of Evil" (1973)
   - Directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz
   - A hidden gem filled with cosmic horror and dread.

Day 2: International Terrors
Location: The Spooky Mansion

2:00 PM: "Kwaidan" (1964)
   - Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
   - Japanese horror anthology that delves into supernatural folklore.

4:30 PM: "The Devil's Backbone" (2001)
   - Directed by Guillermo del Toro
   - A hauntingly beautiful Spanish-language ghost story.

7:00 PM: "Noroi: The Curse" (2005)
   - Directed by Kôji Shiraishi
   - Japanese found footage horror that will leave you questioning reality.

9:00 PM: "Let the Right One In" (2008)
   - Directed by Tomas Alfredson
   - Swedish vampire tale with a unique and chilling twist.

Day 3: Hidden Nightmares
Location: The Abandoned Asylum

3:00 PM: "The Changeling" (1980)
   - Directed by Peter Medak
   - A haunted house tale with a deep and chilling mystery.

5:30 PM: "Lake Mungo" (2008)
   - Directed by Joel Anderson
   - An Australian mockumentary that explores the supernatural.

8:00 PM: "The Wailing" (2016)
   - Directed by Na Hong-jin
   - Korean horror with intense suspense and supernatural elements.

10:30 PM: "The Endless" (2017)
   - Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
   - A mind-bending horror experience that blurs the line between reality and nightmare.

Day 4: Haunted Midnight
Location: The Graveyard Screening

12:00 AM: "The House of the Devil" (2009)
   - Directed by Ti West
   - A slow-burning, atmospheric, and suspenseful horror film.

2:30 AM: "Starry Eyes" (2014)
   - Directed by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer
   - A dark tale of ambition and transformation.

5:00 AM: Festival Closing
   - Farewell and thank you to all attendees.

And there's goes the socialist paradise. Hope you enjoy all your problems being blamed on immigrants. (p.s. That's you!)

Return to Oz

The most likely time you could have made it was 2005, the year of the flood. 2007 was a washout too. 2008 was the start of the truly excellent run but I think you were long gone by then.  With enough money to throw at it you could do next year.  I don't think I'll try for tickets as much as I missed it this year.  My partner has no interest in doing it and slogging it out with the couple of people left I know who go is just not appealing to me.

Fun fact. Rick Moranis insisted they cut the original ending "out of respect for 9/11" but no one understood what he was talking about in 1986.

I did finally finish all the Uncharted games. 2 was a huge step up from 1. I barely remember 3. 4 was the only one that was actually made for the PS4 so it looked far better. I remember it being overly long but had some good moments when it wasn't smelling its own farts, which can probably describe all the narrative Naughty Dog games.  There's 4 hours of really good game in there, 14 hours of faff and "look at our characters with feelings!".

I've now started Last of Us 2. Again the graphics upgrade over the first game are noticeable. However after only a couple of hours the game just makes me uneasy.  There's a pretty nasty scene that kicks things off.  After that the exploring abandoned cities while cranky screeching zombies need to be stealth taken down sure looks nice but I dunno if I LIKE it.  There's no real penalty for death so it shouldn't make me so uneasy but I've got some odd anxiety attached to the playing of it. We'll see if I stick it out or just end up watching a YouTube at 1.5x speed of it.

Not this time. There is also a similar device from Asus called the Rog Ally that would have been a slam dunk competitor if it wasn't for some silly hardware hiccups.  I feel I would be better off waiting for the next gen of both devices and choosing then.  

I've been staring at the Steam Deck as it is currently on sale and wondering if it will help my gaming backlog problem. I can currently stream a good lump of my games to my tablet but the process has just enough friction that it requires a concentrated effort to do. I somehow think I've larger concentration problems conspiring against me.

Filthy McNasty DVD on it's way.

On 11/10/2016 at 8:40 AM, Al. said:

I think this is all perspective. It seems crazy to me the status quo of getting up in the morning and travelling into an office five days a week is even accepted (though I'm currently doing that). Dublin has wonky ass house prices right now so moving out to the sticks seems nice but you end up with a shittier commute. Why hasn't teleworking become a bigger thing? The old guard of managers wanting to see their employees being productive instead of relying on the gobs of tracking info they've attached to everything seems to be the reason. Even if some companies do it it needs to become the norm to decentralise cities, allow people get more time in their lives, reduce pollution/travel costs, allow healthier food choices at lunch, reduce childcare costs etc.

Smart guy!

They're just emulating gravity for the gas giant inhabitants.  

Pat spoiled the twist when he visited a couple of weeks ago.  I will add it to the list of things that we can reasonably blame on reddit dot com.  Glad to hear you are bouncing back and happy birthday!

One for Anton.  

I have finally deactivated my personal Twitter account.   The day I logged in and saw a Tweet from Idiot Boy Elon Musk, Who I do not follow, on the top of my timeline blithering on about birth rates and linking to a video of right wing shill head Tucker Carlson interviewing the fascist PMof Hungary Viktor Orbán was the day I couldn't have an account there any longer.  I still have the toutless account as that is not mine to delete and I will continue to use it to keep me up to date of what gigs are happening but my curated lists of people that interested me etc are all gone now.

I'm on Bluesky which is an invite only attempt to redo Twitter.  It is pretty quiet but has the odd gem. I will likely get an invite code soon if anyone is interested.