ColdStream

I'm not sure I miss the web as it was but miss the feeling of it all being novel and exciting. You can still get glimpses of it nowadays but it isn't often.

I think it is a case of, it is easier to find those niches nowadays but when you do it is a more shallow and controlled version of said thing.

On the old web, you would just stumble onto something deep but the barrier to get to it was fairly high. It could also just be total nonsense but at least you could see the passion behind it.

I agree with your general take. People talk about the old web as 'the good old days' but it really wasn't that great. I do have some fond memories of the mid 2000's when it was all starting to mature but also before corporate capture took hold. Even then, you would just end up stumbling around blindly most of the time.

That has all the hall marks of urban legend, but why let the truth get in the way of a great story.

I have said it for a very long time, Gates wasn't innovative in technology but he absolutely innovated in bringing the most ruthless business practices into software.

And that would get you a system that was fairly anemic even for then. There were still some 286 systems being sold then which was 2 full architecture leaps behind at a time when it was starting to become very important.

Basic and Qbasic represent a part of computer culture that has been lost a little bit. It was the idea of making computers programmable to almost anyone without having to have a deep knowledge of how the system works.

I'm not saying we should go back to BASIC but that spirit of easy to build has been lost a little. Nowadays you need to pull in like 40 dependencies before things can get really moving. Yeah it is OK after that but the barrier to entry can be a little tough at times. This is the same complaint I have about multimedia on the web, Flash solved the issue in a terrible fashion but the core idea was great.

The good news is that 5.25" floppies have tended to be more resilient to time than the 3.5" discs. Turns out just having less data spread over a larger space helped them in this regard.

Hardest part is usually trying to find working drives and a means of getting the data off the system.

Absolutely brilliant show. Highly recommend it to anyone. Feels like a hyper condensed version of the X-files but with a decent sense of humour to it as well.

Season two will be out next year and I am curious to see how it goes. Towards the end of season one, the side effects were starting to get interesting, possibilities of it turning dark abound.

I'm just glad that after Joe Bennets previous show Scavengers Reign got axed after one season that we will finally get to see some of his stuff expanded.

Considering how much news publishers are struggling to keep the lights on, this can only be a good thing. Anything that can slow, delay or cancel the race to $0 new can only be a good thing.

Obligatory Future dream commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElkVRgeAzYs

I am starting to suspect Netflix goal in future is just to hold out longer than other streaming services. The long game of attrition.

I can see a lot of the smaller services folding into each other or just giving up over the next few years as they can no longer be sustained. I mean how long can Paramount hold out? Apple TV+ might be able to ride on the coat tails of the rest of the business but I could see them eventually licensing their content to Netflix or anyone that can keep the line going up.

Funnily enough Sony has been the one major hold out in that they are more than happy to license their content but haven't dare put their foot into the business as they have been burned in the past before. Remember Sony's Music Unlimited? Yeah, they learned their lesson from that.

Netflix's moat is their scale. Nobody else has that and it will be very difficult for anyone to come up from below without a back log of content, and even that isn't enough if you don't have said scale.

Maybe the future will be a silly bizarre combination of Netflix, Hayu and Tubi and that's it. Don't take this prediction seriously.

I mean AI data centers are silly things and they do use a lot of resources, but as a whole they are barely rounding error compared with the super organism that is the sum of all our consumption. And that is pretty depressing when you think about it.

It has been fascinating watching how all the model predictions have evolved over the last 8 months.

Back at the start of the year, they all figured it would peak at about 2c, now almost every model is over 3c with some well above that.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/current/plume.ht...

We aren't as used to this as we used to be due to the higher pace of news nowadays (increasing for decades mind you), but this is something that will unfold over the next year or two and will have a lasting tale that could go may years beyond that.

Thus the predicament of climate change, it moves just slow enough that many can ignore it, but it moves fast enough that the ecosystem is being slammed by it. And the industrial civilization built on top of it? Time will tell how we manage.

Yep, increased productivity but reduced understanding.

Not everyone that uses this stuff is doing it poorly but there are enough people out there using this recklessly and without care. They will be the ones that will end up bringing some mission critic thing to its knees.

To be pedantic, if I was put a brick on a car accelerator and have it fly off into a set target, that would be an near-autonomous attack to some degree.

Yes, this is much more complex in details but there are people behind this directing the tools.

I haven't had much time to dive in really deep but it does seem to cover all the core bases. Very cool indeed. Does make it somewhat intuitive which is a great first step.

One note to people, don't try to resize the browser once it has started as it will scale in weird ways.

It is one of those things, yes they are old but they also aren't that old considering the impact personal computers have had on everything.

"I haven't heard of that LLM model, how is it?"

Yeah we usually vote for those that come out of them. ;)

A great summary of the issue. It increases productivity but reduces understanding. The flow on from that is a lack of personal engagement and ownership of what is being done. The lack of autonomy can be devastating to a person.

The idea that people are spinning up a lot of AI agents that are running Linux seems fairly plausible. It would explain the sudden uptake beyond just desktop use growth.

I remember when Doomberg used to just focus on economics, I suspect he might have falling into audience capture a little. That said I do love that regardless of where they go, there is always the animated chicken.

Yet again the universe has a dark sense of humor.

You could be confusing that with cockney slang. ;)

Looking back over any code older than 12 months is always like archaeology, at least if it is my poorly documented tech-debt ridden nonsense.

Yep, here in Australia you almost never hear anyone mention it. The silence is deafening, especially with how quickly people just rolled over on this stuff "For the children".

That said it was funny, yesterday Microsoft said I had to age verify my account. I went in basically with the intention of backing out of it at the first sign of over reach.

First step was, 'provide you email for this account'. So I did that and then... approved! You are certified over 18+. That is the flip side of this, some of these companies will put up some of the weakest barriers on this stuff.

Most tasty actions in this world always hide behind a claim to virtue.

If D&D didn't lead you to Satan, you were playing it wrong. ;)

While what you say seem intuitive, it is missing one point. Those locations probably are not recording exactly who is coming and going and what they are saying/doing.

That is where this become more than just gate keeping and becomes full on tracking.

Pretty much. As soon as kids start going to school, there is a large amount of time where they are out of the supervision of the parents. This is when they end up being dragged to the general flow of society for better and worse.

This is something where I agree and disagree with both sides.

Parents should have the tools to protect their children, the providers should have those tools in place. But those that are dealing the goods as also heavily invested in trying to maximize engagement and so they do not really work to hard on providing those tools.