Some middle-aged guy on the Internet; Seen a lot of it and occasionally regurgitate it, trying to be amusing and informative.

Lurked Digg until v4.

Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.

Now I’m here.

Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish

Applying for mod in places where an occasional mod would better than none at all.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Reminds me of a TV ad, older than this comic, for a frosted cereal (probably not the first one that comes to mind) and the adult about to consume them has the inner dialogue “What about fat?!” “Wimp!”

    (I always heard it as “Wamp!”, so to this day I’m not completely sure if it was an early example of a spoken sad trombone, but “Wimp!” is more likely.)

    They don’t make ads like that any more.





  • It’s not about whether it works, it’s about proving that they’re keeping pace with the trends in technology that they’re not directly driving.

    They’re afraid that if they don’t give that impression, their stockholders will pull their money and give it to someone who does, and since that’s what their stockholders also fear about all the other stockholders, that’s what will happen.

    AI funding is so far up it’s own backside I’m not sure they’ll hear the cry of the small child pointing out that this Emperor has no clothes.


  • Set one up when I used a different handle but literally never used it. Thought I had a short ID number but, for reasons I’m not sure of, the piddly scrap of paper I wrote the number down on has always been in a particular place (and has been there for well over a decade), and it was 9 digits.

    Must have been thinking of that handle’s Slashdot ID. That was 6 digits.

    … and technically still is. Wow. The account is apparently still there. Not sure I’m going back there any time soon, but took this opportunity to reset the password just in case.



  • Had to check. It looks like the comic actually only ceased production last year after the passing of the (second) artist.

    Chris Browne took on Hägar after his father Dik - who drew the linked comic - died, but today I learned that Chris died last year.

    As an extra kicker, I also learned that his brother Chance died a couple of months back. He didn’t draw Hägar but had taken on another of their father’s strips, Hi and Lois.

    My denial about getting older can only take so much of this.







  • Surprised they haven’t tried to train a neural network to find a compression algorithm specifically for their sort of data.

    There’s a ridiculous irony in the fact they haven’t, and it’s still ironic even if they have and have thrown the idea out as a failure. Or a dystopian nightmare.

    But if it is the latter, they might help save time and effort by telling “the public” what avenues have already failed, or that they don’t want purely AI-generated solutions. Someone’s bound to try it otherwise.




  • “I’m a million different people from one day to the next; I can’t change my mould, no no.” — Bittersweet Symphony

    We all show rotating aspects of ourselves, but we remain fundamentally the same. Unless something drastic happens that changes how those aspects present or function anyway.

    (Maybe that lyric doesn’t mean what I’m reading into it, but it’s what I’ve taken from it. That’s a funny thing about art.)

    So yeah, I’ve looked back through comments I’ve made and realised that I knew something at the time that I’d since forgotten, and seen how smart I’d been - or how utterly cringe-inducing, and known that at some point, that if the cringe is bound to return, so might the smart. Hopefully. Maybe. Please.

    There’s also the fact that we distil ourselves down for a comment. Present the best side, or the best of the aspect we’re going for. Even trolls do this. Unfortunately. So when we look back, not at all in the same frame of mind that we were at the time, it’s like looking at the highlights of someone else’s life on some other social media, not seeing everything else that’s going on besides.

    I probably won’t remember all the edits and corrections I’ve made to this comment before submitting the first time. Only time knows how future me will perceive it, should I ever look back.



  • Peertube is the Fediverse equivalent of YouTube, the Fediverse being what Lemmy (where you are), Kbin (where I am) etc. are also a part of.

    As far as I’m aware, it’s a matter of finding an instance you resonate with, create an account and share away.

    Do bear in mind that since it’s the Fediverse, Peertube instances aren’t usually backed by a large organisation with bags of cash, so if you can afford to donate to your instance, at least consider doing so.

    I’d also recommend not using Peertube as a be-all-end-all storage for your videos. Always keep a copy for yourself. People do this with YouTube and they shouldn’t unless they’re OK with suddenly and forever losing that content at some unspecified future date. The same can happen with PeerTube, but the reasons are likely to be different (instance closing rather than unexpected account deletion).

    Corporation-backed video hosts include: Twitch, Dailymotion and Vimeo. You could probably also host on Facebook. While these are options, they might make you feel as unclean as I did typing that out.