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kome

4,560 karma · joined January 20, 2012

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kome··on I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me
as a researcher, writing ended up being my job, and more specifically, writing in english. i never developed any sentimental link to the english language, to me it always felt bland, because i had to use it in bland environments, to write texts that had to be bland and manneristic.

chatgpt revolutionized my work because it makes creating those bland texts so much easier and fast. it made my job more interesting because i don't have to care about writing as much as before.

to those who complain about ai slop, i have nothing to say. english was slop before, even before ai, and not because of some conspiracy, but because the gatekeepers of journals and scientific production already wanted to be fed slop.

for sure society will create others, totally idiosyncratic ways to generate distinction and an us vs others. that's natural. but, for now, let's enjoy this interregnum...

kome··on 2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web
ooo... i thought Last.fm was a rebranding of audioscrobbler; i didn't know it was a parallel project. and I am an audioscrobbler user since 2006! and I've used it to this day, i mean, last.fm.

very interesting article!

kome··on Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
they increased the price also last year... i went back to pirating after, dunno, 15 years or more.
kome··on Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?
how the tech world is becoming trumpian-like is a funny thing to witness - try to unionize next time
kome··on Migrating Dillo from GitHub
... and it will be SourceForge. finally.
kome··on France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors
you’re getting the logic wrong. i’m absolutely sure apple and google have direct cia backdoors. that’s what Snowden taught us and it would be delusional to think the world has changed. The bigger the company = tighter the link with power
kome··on France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors
that's my understanding as well. absolutely unsurprising btw.
kome··on France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors
I mean, sorry, but the EU essentially installed puppets in both Romania and Moldova, what are we even talking about here?
kome··on Shai-Hulud Returns: Over 300 NPM Packages Infected
why don't web devs just learn html and css properly, and maybe xslt for the really complex transformations then use vanilla js only when it's truly necessary?

instead we've got this absolute mess of bloated, over-engineered junk code and ridiculously complicated module systems.

kome··on Kagi Bloopers – Search Results Gone Wrong
they used yandex up until 2022, and now they use bing and other
kome··on Kagi Bloopers – Search Results Gone Wrong
also duckduckgo use(d) yandex. not many alternatives in this space
kome··on FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs
use GPL
kome··on Removing XSLT for a more secure browser
json is sort of a gresham's law "bad money drives out the good" but for tech: lazy and forgiving technologies drive out the better but stricter ones.

bad technology seems to make life easier at the beginning, but that's why we now have sloppy websites that are an unorganized mess of different libraries, several MB in size without reason, and an absolute usability and accessibility nightmare.

xhtml and xml were better, also the idea separating syntax from presentation, but they were too intelligent for our own good.

kome··on My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
that's me, and it really doesn't matter
kome··on My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
i'll never understand picky preferences about monitors... i still use an LG flatron wide that's old enough to vote... and when i slack at the apple store, it's not like i notice some life-or-death difference. a monitor is a monitor.

ok, i guess for graphic designers it might matter more?

kome··on US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces
The whole WikiLeaks affair about "Collateral Murder" was also about hiding U.S. war crimes. US army goes a long way to hide that stuff...

It was followed by a decade of ridiculous but very effective character assassination of Assange, who is hated based on how dislikable he appears.

I recommend youngsters and "zoomers" read about it, because the recent past is often the most forgotten: https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/

kome··on AI Weiwei: What I Wish I Had Known About Germany Earlier
that's HN's automatic editing for you.
kome··on German industrial output falls to 2005 levels as auto sector craters
a lot of LNG is actually Russian tho, using shadow fleets, and this is ridiculous and stupid. But it's what Europe need... imho, while all the investment should be on solar, wind and water - it would be better to cut the hypocrisy and to buy cheap gas from russia.
kome··on German industrial output falls to 2005 levels as auto sector craters
basically, you are right. as the other commented said, "Europe cedes sovereignty with gas" be it Russian or American. The continent should be laser focused with renewables and other forms of energy generation (also nuclear, if necessary, even if i am not too happy about it)
kome··on German industrial output falls to 2005 levels as auto sector craters
"TBF, at the time, I also fell to the propaganda of Merkel being the best and smartest stateswoman ever."

to be honest, this is what enrages me. I feel like I was in a madhouse; the mass media were pushing an image of Merkel as the only adult in the room and the patron saint of liberalism.

I saw, live, how she mismanaged the Eurocrisis, turning a banking crisis into a humanitarian crisis, and how her reaction to the invasion of Crimea was meek.

but if you dared to say something about this, you were seen as a dangerous communist or worse.

I hated her flawed politics for 15 years. But now, surprisingly, I kind of miss her. not because she was good; she was terrible as i said, but the new leadership, especially in Germany, is far worse: Friedrich Merz is a zero, and von der Leyen seems utterly retarded, and i don't mean it in a mocking way, but literally: they are always choosing the worst option for Europe at every step.

dark clouds over europe... but mostly, of our own making.

kome··on German industrial output falls to 2005 levels as auto sector craters
Cutting cheap Russian gas was a suicidal move for European manufacturing (and households).
kome··on Fastmail desktop app
ahaha please...
kome··on Nobel Prize in Literature 2025: László Krasznahorkai
ok, it was an hyperbole,

perhaps the same kind of hyperbole krasznahorkai likes to use when talking about the "arabs": "I'm sure the Arabs would accept me now that they're gonna cut off my nose, then my eyes, and then they'll poke my eyes out, my tongue rip it out, everything that sticks out of me, cut it off, tortured me, and then shoot me. So that is the Jewish past is enough for me. That’s all the family history" (https://www.szombat.org/kultura-muveszetek/krasznahorkai-las...) (...that's an example among many)

kome··on California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches
Isn't the overwhelmingly obese American population scientific evidence enough?
kome··on California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches
sure, it's all nature. and then wonder why you get 50% of the population morbidly obese...

you are being skeptical in a very silly way, sorry to say. if you don't see the industry incentives to use trash in your food instead of normal ingredients, you are missing the point in a very unproductive way.

kome··on California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches
That's an annoying question. When you add industrial chemicals, yes, it's ultra processed.

If you buy a fresh hamburger at the butcher, made by him with salt and pepper, it's processed food.

But if you add sodium nitrite/nitrate, monosodium glutamate, phosphates, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, sodium erythorbate, carrageenan, bha/bht, propyl gallate, tbhq, soy protein isolate, modified food starch, dextrose, caramel color, red 40, yellow 5, etc... it's ultra-processed food.

kome··on California passes law to ban ultra-processed foods from school lunches
Americans need to get their act together, about food, but not only. 40.3% of American adults are obese (not overweight), against the 17% in the EU.

Sport won't fix that, food will.

kome··on EU age verification app not planning desktop support
so a smartphone is required by law? that's fucked up
kome··on You Had No Taste Before AI
this discussion about taste and ai is annoying. the world was conformist even before ai. most web design before 2023 was conformist, most pop music was boring, most writing was cliché, corporate speak was already retarded. ai didn't invent banality: we had plenty of it before.

why everybody is just repeating safe things, instead of expressing themselves... ai is not en explanation. we should have interrogated ourselves about the whys this happens. complaining about AI is, again, missing the point.

kome··on Burner Phone 101
Your reasoning is so biased that it is hard for me to wrap my head around it, but at the same time it's very common because it confuses the tool with the crime. Criminals use cars and phones, too, but we don't ban them for everyone.

The argument ignores the catastrophic cost of the solution: destroying privacy for all of us. Creating a backdoor for police doesn't just hinder criminals; it makes everyone's data, from journalists to your medical records, vulnerable to hackers and abuse.

I believe we stop crime with good policing, not by building a system of total surveillance that sacrifices the very freedom we're trying to protect.

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