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#1

ULT Discussion / Progress Report

Last post by James G. - Oct 28, 2026, 06:57 AM

I've been very low-energy on my ULT project for the past few months, but I finally started working on this again, with some tweaks which I hope should help get it out the door more quickly and make it easier to maintain.

The outline, which I gave in a private email at one point, is more or less as follows:
1. Release a PHP version. The main tweak from the last working trial version is that now it will take advantage of a third-party account/authentication system instead of leaning on my own. The first steps in that direction look promising, though there's still a lot more work to do before it's up and moving. I intend to provide more details on this soon.
2. Work on a desktop version. The first released edition will likely still connect to this server for online play, and just add offline/hotseat play to the feature list, so the functional experience won't be much different from the PHP version, but it's a step in the right direction.
3. Work on a more 'independent' version, which can connect to something besides the existing server. Ideally there would be the ability to connect directly to other clients, to host/join matches on an arbitrary tracker, and to choose arbitrary servers for situations where remote hosting is required. It would make sense for each of these to be somewhat discrete goals.

I don't claim that all of these goals will surely be accomplished. The seemingly endless, off-and-on development cycle to get it just to where it is would make that promise foolhardy. However, I do hope to get at least the first stage done, and each stage should be viable enough that if other things come up and I don't get to develop the next stage as I hoped, everyone would still be left with a viable program.

Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

#2

Random Access / Re: My linux box musings.

Last post by James G. - Oct 19, 2026, 05:16 PM

I'm not sure why I use ROX so much, when I have pcmanfm, Thunar, and Dolphin. It may have to do with my own base in Puppy, as that's how I got into linux. It'd be quite sad if/when it finally is dropped, but it requires so little out of the system that it'll take a while.

Caja is the only mainline Linux file manager I really basically liked on Linux, because it was the one most like Finder. I could see using ROX-Filer over the other options you mentioned, even if it isn't well-supported, particularly if you get the benefits of the pinboards with it.

I think they are still trying to keep it going on some level, and somebody is taking a crack at a new version of it, though I don't know whether that will pan out. But it isn't maintained in the sense that you can go on the old Sourceforge page and see life.

How is *nix on Macs, these days?

Well, diskutil (a CLI disk program) is usable, unlike the default disk tools on most Linux systems. But the rest of it isn't exceptional. A lot of the things you'd take for granted on Linux just aren't there out of the box, and has to be set up. If that happens every time you want something, that gets old. The advantages of the system still outweigh the disadvantages for me, especially given the hardware, but it's fair to say Linux seems like a better overall CLI and development system (which, admittedly, is what we'd expect, given the users and usage cases each platform is marketed to).

#3

Random Access / Re: My linux box musings.

Last post by Verdauga - Oct 19, 2026, 04:48 PM

I didn't know you'd gotten back into Slackware. I guess it's working better now? I seem to remember you saying there were some glitches a while (a year or two ago) back. Of course, by now I guess there's been enough time for them to patch that.

I never really left it-- I added Linux Mint, but keep most of my traffic on Slackware; Mint follows in the path of Debian and Ubuntu, and has similar reasons why I don't like it. As far as glitches, I have noticed that it occasionally has issues starting into X11, but I've traced that to network connections. Still a glitch, but a temporary one.

It depends on what you want to run, I s'pose, but I had a good experience getting a Radeon off eBay a few years back. The regular prices were totally out of control, but it was reasonable, within the range of what I considered not-expensive, then.
Come to think of it, are you still using that laptop or have you moved onto more expandable pastures? That'd be another constraint, I'd think.

Well, I moved on from the old HP laptop, to an old Dell laptop-- It has an AMD card as an option, which actually performs better than the nVidia card, and has better integration with Linux, so it'd be a solid upgrade. I do want to get an (old) desktop eventually, but when I have a more expanded living area for it.

The ROX family kinda makes me sad in that it was evidently meant to be so much more than what it has turned out to be.

I admit, I don't care for much more than the Filer, but it would have been nice to have yet another option for a desktop environment. I'm not sure why I use ROX so much, when I have pcmanfm, Thunar, and Dolphin. It may have to do with my own base in Puppy, as that's how I got into linux. It'd be quite sad if/when it finally is dropped, but it requires so little out of the system that it'll take a while.

I would take you up on the offer for the scripts, but I don't handle audio files with enough frequency to need that automation just yet.

How is *nix on Macs, these days?

#4

General Discussion / Re: LLMs and LLM policies

Last post by James G. - Oct 19, 2026, 04:19 AM

I haven't found a use for generative AI that isn't better done thro' some other method-- perhaps GAI is 'cheaper', but that's a different point to be debated.

Well, I guess the question here is how we define 'better', and who is it better for. LLMs are rightly controversial, and people have a right not to like them or want to use them if they don't want to. But that's different from arguing about the qualities of some works.

To use an example here which you're likely to be familiar with, free software advocates are gung-ho about free software for ideological reasons. But some go further by saying that because it is free, it must be actually better - better features, better reliability, etc. Well, even the FSF says that proprietary software can be 'better' in areas other than in its licensing. Being morally/socially/etc. against something doesn't mean we have to mislead ourselves about its positive qualities.

In the most straightforward sense, of "human (programmers, artists, whatever) put out better work than LLMs", I'd say, yes, some of them do; that's objectively true. But judging by the standard we would have used to judge human work, many other humans do not put out better work than LLMs, at least in some area or another.

Of course, if our definition of 'better' includes being made by humans, then of course human work is always better, necessarily so. And it is fine if that is the definition we all agree on and want to use. But, fundamentally, that is no different from saying that the art a child made is better than the art displayed in a museum made by some dead guy from the 1600s, because we know and love our child. That connection may be a powerful reason for our preference, but what would we think of a piece if we didn't know (or couldn't reasonably guess) who made it?

Aside from that, the amount of misinformation, and the readiness of people I know offline to accept and run to GAI to solve their problems, makes me incredibly concerned.

When it comes to misinformation, I'm more concerned about fake photos, videos, and voiceovers than just writing. It seems like our culture in general has gone all-in when it comes to lying nowadays, and of course, people have always made mistakes or said things that were merely incorrect. But it's another level of problem when it becomes easy to portray someone as having said something they didn't. This problem existed before (Dan Quayle quotes are often either fake or taken unfairly out of context), but it's one thing to allege that someone did or said something, and another to 'show' them doing it. Once such allegations are made, then the burden of proof tends to shift towards the person being so portrayed to prove that they *didn't* say that. That's a major issue. In a few years, at the rate we are going, I wouldn't be totally shocked if video and photo evidence stops being admissible in courts.

In the other case, we have to consider that people have been trained to look things up online for years. It just so happens now that looking it up online is based around LLM tools now, because everything they would have used in the past is gone.

Suppose I had a problem in 2006 and wanted to get help. Well, the first thing I'd probably do is Google it. But Google - and search engines in general now - are just useless a lot of the time. This is where 'AI slop' really comes into play, because a lot of those sites clogging up the results pages are new and mass-produced, but that's not the only factor.

Forums? Fine, but it'll probably take a while before you get a response - hours or days or weeks - not great for short-term issues. Site directory? They're all dead. Instant chat? There's Discord, which lives up to its name. Other than that, they're pretty much dead. There's Facebook, but that's limited to people you know, and you always feel like you're bothering somebody, as opposed to a pseudonymous person across the world who presumably wouldn't reply if they weren't interested.

Bear in mind, now, that I am talking about the most general case here, LLMs for looking up tips, facts, and as a search engine replacement (which is more or less what you hit on in your complaint anyway). There are all other kinds of things that can go wrong, like people wanting to marry bots or other such nonsense, which are worth hitting on, but that's out of our scope (for now).

My two personal largest issues with AI is that using reduces how much uses community-- it helps separate people-- and how people are less often learning how to do things themselves.

It's true they do; you're not wrong. I think that was already happening before, and then the LLMs came along to 'fill in' (and further increase) the gap. I know that in my case, I've found it easier to turn to LLM solutions because of the absence of people and answers in the niche that I'm looking for. I think people also feel more comfortable consulting a mindless machine than random people who might judge or criticize them as readily as offer help. To be fair, I think StackExchange (which seemed to be the web's main source of human-to-human information, once upon a time) wasn't so bad at that, but on forums, it isn't unheard of to have somebody say that you shouldn't think that or you shouldn't want that or you shouldn't have posted without figuring it out yourself first.

On the latter, I do have a problem with trends that lead us towards not being able to understand how to think or to audit what bots and systems are doing. Somebody put up some snippet suggesting that their child wouldn't need much of a traditional education and that it would be more important for them to learn to 'be kind', now that there are LLMs. I honestly found that disgusting. Of course kindness is important, but it always was. It's one thing if someone turns out to be a dependent person in spite of everything, but it's another thing when you never gave them a choice. The child may turn out to be a kind person, but you're not being kind to them if you refuse to give them the ability to understand how the world works and how things got this way.

At the same time, though, LLMs needn't necessarily stop people from thinking. I think part of the issue here is marketing and deployment. LLMs have been made into a magic genie buried inside of a computer (complete with a sparkle icon announcing its presence), so that people feel encouraged to just rub the screen and have it fix all their problems for them. If companies had developed LLM technology 'quietly' and introduced LLM-based features into existing paradigms, I don't think we would have the same culture shock, or grounds for complaint.

i disagre james.

Of course you do.

for 1 it r betr to get teh things tahn not.

Is that so? I believe it depends on the thing.

Suppose we have a chess program, Opinionated Chess, made for the Amiga. It is a pretty good, though not perfect, program. What's better - to have a solid community based around this common thing, or to have 500 other chess programs as everybody designs something to fix their pet peeve with Opinionated Chess (though none of them fix all of its problems, or even implement all of its features)? Sometimes the best thing is for someone to get used to what is already out there, instead of reinventing it.

Is it better to have a few masterful paintings of the Apostle Andrew, or 1,000 okay pictures of him?

Is it better to have a great novel or one hundred mediocre dime novels?

I might agree that it's sometimes better to 'get the things' when it doesn't exist and there is effectively no probability of that thing being made otherwise. For instance, people have had 25+ years to make an Apple menu applet for Xfce Panel; if they haven't done it by now on their own it seems doubtful they ever will. So I'm not necessarily universally adverse to help in that area (obviously, or else I would not have used LLM tools to make one).

But it is far from clear that this same pattern holds when there are a lot of alternatives out there. There may be a lot of time spent making something, but at least that time is spent by one person who has thought about it. I do think that is qualitatively superior over one thousand people who haven't thought about it, and moreover, I think that it is worth protecting those users from themselves, who may otherwise suppose that they can do better for 'free', and perhaps form their own little splinter groups, rather than supporting the person who took the time to do it right. And there is, of course, value in the shared experience of knowing that others have used or seen or read something, and liked it. That effect is so strong that it has built every fan community that has ever existed.

but seconly tehy hav pleny o time to improv... it r just after teh 1st tihng is done... c james... u stil think o new tings to ad... teh ai's mak teh whole thng tak less time 2 make is all.

Is that really 'all'? In theory, maybe it could be. But in practice, with actual people, I just don't think that's how it works out.

The first thing we have to take into consideration is that creating a work, any work, is about the details. Small things make up great things. We know from observing people, or reading books, or watching games, that if a trait or a sentence or a rule were a little bit different, it just wouldn't be quite the same. But LLMs tend to accommodate broad strokes. Now, I could give precise instructions in pseudocode and reasonably expect the bot to translate them to the real thing (albeit a year or two ago, that task would not have had a high probability of success). But I can also say "make a program that does this". If I don't provide the details and the formula, it will fill in those blanks on its own, even when those details are essentially the core of the program. If I say "make a sim that generates match scores for hypothetical matches between two chess players", and expect the bot to work out the formulas and details for how to do that, I will get more or less what I expect. But that's not another way of doing programming, much less designing, that's at best the CEO of the company giving an employee an idea. That is not conducive to building, or maintaining, a creative, detail-oriented mindset. It is a process that produces things quickly, but those aren't 'the same things faster', any more than microwaving frozen burritos is the same as actually cooking meat and beans and tortillas and mixing them together.

u can actly giv things 2 ppl to use nd tehy can b like 'hey tat snake game r rly cool maybe it culd hav rooms u can go in!!!' w teh old setup, u r like 'tat r a gud idea, just wait anotr year and ill hav it', and tey r lik 'watev jams'. but w teh new one, u r lik 'that idea r sooo cool, here it is!11!' evbody is hapy james!11

It is potentially faster. But I'd point out that developing isn't just knowing what to put in, it's also knowing what not to put in, and a lot of the time, knowing that takes some kind of experience, experience which is very hard to develop when you don't actually think through the problems on your own, but hope that the AI will fix it for you.

Don't get me wrong. We can't make hard-and-fast universal rules for everybody about these issues. If you have a critical attitude, like Steve Jobs, and go in expecting that the LLM did everything wrong, and searching and looking for things and areas where you can tell it that it was wrong, you might actually be able to get by using LLMs without a significant loss in your critical thinking ability (both in the most direct sense, and in the general sense). The trouble is, I'm not sure that this is a healthy mindset to have in the long-term. It certainly isn't one I would want to seep over into my personal life. It is not how most people think, or want to think. They want to be basically agreeable, and are willing to compromise to avoid a confrontation. That's perhaps fine when you're compromising with someone you care about, but we shouldn't set up scenarios where people are likely to compromise with bots.

but wat wld hapn if u took a long time usin teh ai's?!? u mite hav somethin tats rly good.

Possibly. Will people actually tend to do that? "Good enough" is the enemy of "good" (much less "perfect").

dere r only a few ppl who r grate software ppl james. ur woryin all teh time bout 'oh noes wat if tihs r rly bad and sombodies or teh ai's break it???' if teh ai's break it mayb tehy can fix it too james... can u do betr shiftin ur car manual tahn teh automatic thing??

In principle I don't think this idea is actually wrong. Based on our experience so far, and from science fiction (which is conveniently, in part, something of a collected body of work about dealing with LLMs), there's no obvious reason why bots couldn't become better at certain skills than most people. I think that is already true in certain cases; reportedly Claude Mythos is far better at hacking than virtually any human.

That said, I would point out a couple of things here. First, the point in science fiction where bots get better skills than their developers is typically around the same point where they start getting out of control. In fact, if we think about what being 'in control' means, that is necessarily true. Once you no longer have the skill to keep up with and understand what the bot is doing, you are no longer in control of it in the strictest sense of the term. That doesn't mean that it is plotting anything nefarious or destructive, but you are banking on its output having been in line with your intent, because you can't fix it if it wasn't.

Secondly, there are some areas where we know the bots are wrong, or 'bad'. I am no Brian Jacques or Louis L'amour, but I'm still a decent writer myself, and I know a good piece of writing when I see it. Bot work isn't it. I've seen bot-written work on a wiki, and even when the facts are there, it's worthless as body. We're going to have to go through all of that and write it all pretty much from scratch. If bots are clumsy, inhuman and bad in the things we do readily understand, how can we then trust that they are actually great in things we don't understand? I grant it's possible, but I'd rather not bet anything important on it for a good while yet.

how many clothesppl nd shoeppl nd furntureppl r u buyin from james? ya it r sad taht ppl who spent allll tehr time figurin out how 2 do somethin teh hard way r not goin to be gettin big advantge. but taht is how it is jams. u cant change it. anyways if teir skils r so grate like u say tehy can stil be sucesful. if waht tey do isnt any bettr tho than whats alrdy ben done then was it worth allll taht time?? think o how much time ppl spend lerning and doin these things james. by savin all dat time we r savin lives!11!

I did get some expensive handcrafted shoes a while back, and there's a significant piece of furniture in my bedroom that was handcrafted.

I grant that there are inevitable economic pressures, and that a genius can probably be successful in spite of that. The problem here is when our process deters developing that genius in the first place. We could well end up with a dragonish generation, who, as Thorin says, "hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the market value".

u dont need ai subscriptn anymore... but evn if teh ai company is makin monies so wat? they r doin a public servic!!

Maybe not, on the subscriptions. But I must say I am skeptical of the service angle. These companies are using up good land and water, kicking thousands, and potentially millions, if the habitually hyperbolic claims of their leaders come true, of people out of jobs, while helping build a surveillance state, and funding hypocrites who claim that their machines can do their jobs better than they can (notwithstanding they haven't actually given up any of their control that I know of), imagine that LLMs deserve equal rights with humans, and dream of one day making their own gods. What exactly is good about all this? At least the Romans gave bread with the circus.

tihs r assumin ppl r goin to b usin the ai's in ways taht r obnoxus james... r tehy obnuxus??? isnt that just ur opinon?? i dont think im sufring

Well, you can't be suffering here because it's banned.

I have seen enough bot writing in public settings that I can fairly say that I believe it is obnoxious. It's one thing for someone to be making, say, stories or scripts with bot output - that's bad form and style, but whatever; it is their loss. But it's another thing when they try to make it my loss. When somebody is attempting to argue a point, and it is clearly bot-written, that's about at the level of 'tldr' in terms of contempt and disrespect. "You are so wrong that I couldn't be bothered to think about this myself or form my own arguments; here is my answering machine to win the debate against your self-evident stupidity." In fact, I'm not sure if I wouldn't prefer tldr, since at least it is efficient in the space used for the thought expressed (bot posts rarely are), and the person cared enough to type the characters in themselves.

On the flip side of the emotional spectrum, while I've never gotten a love letter, there is a big difference between the sincere feelings of your dearly-be and the sincere scribblings of ChatGPT. If a young woman bought me a card, I at least know that she went to the store and looked through the cards and picked one out and spent good money on it. That's a far cry from "hey chat, write me a love letter for somebody named james". I would find the latter obnoxious, and I think most people would too. If you're not one of those people, this site is probably not for you.

no offens james but i think u are readin waaaayy 2 much into it. ur assumin bad thins when ppl r tryin to help.

Maybe so; I grant that support. LMGTFY may have skewed my view a little in this area.

so say some1 asks a questin lik 'heyy how can i get teh toilet to stop floodin?!?' i hav no idea but i ask chatgpt n it says 'ya u needa turn teh thing on the thing' and tehy do it and it works!!1 hows taht bad? ... if its true its true isnt it?

In this specific case which was manufactured so as to compel me to agree with your point, I'd agree that it sounds like a good thing was done. But most situations that invite advice in online forums are not time-sensitive with easily testable solutions that have no major probability of backfiring in a significant way if it fails. Sure, if you are stuck in that specific situation with the toilet, then you might as well follow bot advice as stand there and watch your floor get covered with sewage. But that's not the norm.

If the information is true that's one thing, but the very point in question is whether it is or not. I would prefer you to take the time to tell whether it is true or not, based on an actual source. And in some cases, where the thing being tested is not really testable other than in person, a bot opinion is worthless. A bot knows nothing about whether a camera is actually any good; I need real users to tell me that. For all I know the bot got its information from the company's advertising page.

We may evaluate whether some LLM things are acceptable down the line, but I would rather start out on the conservative side and decide, at length, that certain things are okay after all, than to rush in, allow everything, regret it, and then have a tricky time chasing down all the myriad evils and forcing them back into the box they were let out of. 'Move fast and break things' may work for certain start-ups, but I think human relationships and discussions are broken enough as it is.

#5

Random Access / Re: My linux box musings.

Last post by James G. - Oct 18, 2026, 07:21 PM

I more or less have my slackware machine set up how I want it, but I'm still adding polish here and there.

I didn't know you'd gotten back into Slackware. I guess it's working better now? I seem to remember you saying there were some glitches a while (a year or two ago) back. Of course, by now I guess there's been enough time for them to patch that.

My personal opinions on Slackware, of course, remain well known to you.

On the hardware side, I still want to get an AMD graphics card-- it's more powerful and plug-n-play with Linux than my nVidia card.

It depends on what you want to run, I s'pose, but I had a good experience getting a Radeon off eBay a few years back. The regular prices were totally out of control, but it was reasonable, within the range of what I considered not-expensive, then.

Come to think of it, are you still using that laptop or have you moved onto more expandable pastures? That'd be another constraint, I'd think.

recently, I finally put my browser in a sandbox (James in particular knows how concerning it is how long I've gone without that) and added .webp thumbnail support to my ROX Filer.

To be honest, I haven't done the former myself, but then I was using Fedora, which is pretty locked down by default.

I've always wanted to love the Filer. It is still good on systems that are built around it, like Puppy. But I like my list mode with disclosure triangles.

The ROX family kinda makes me sad in that it was evidently meant to be so much more than what it has turned out to be. The Filer isn't the best supported either, so the experience feels like using 20-year-old software on a system that hasn't formally dropped support for it yet. I don't mind that in principle, but I'm always worried about when the drop will come. I think Puppy is probably its last base.

I keep running across base linux programs-- mplayer, display, animate-- and they keep supporting increasingly bizarre file-types. I found out mplayer can play .3gp video files! Why!? But I'm not complaining in the least xD

There's lots of things buried in there, and lots of potential for scripting. I made a script a while back, flacgun, that converts .wav files to .flac; I have that in PHP and Python versions. It seems like one of them has/had a bug, but if you want either one, let me know.

I have to admit I haven't used Linux the past few days, but I expect Apple will eventually do something that will swing me back to it again - even if it's something as basic as dropping hardware support. I can say that *nix on Macs is not the same; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. (Judging by our past conversations, I suspect you're safe.)

#6

General Discussion / Re: LLMs and LLM policies

Last post by Tester - Oct 17, 2026, 08:30 PM

I have to agree with James on this one, Tester.

thats ok verd theres lots of time to chaenge ur mind!!1 but evn if u dont i think ull stil like my pwrful pts aginst james.

I contend that LLMs do worse by forming only an idea, the original one. The person never goes on a journey where they struggle with the meaning and purpose of their work, and have no opportunity to learn or improve as they go.

i disagre james. for 1 it r betr to get teh things tahn not. but seconly tehy hav pleny o time to improv... it r just after teh 1st tihng is done. ur dev is like 'ooh i hav lerned soooo much ovr teh curse o teh 4 years i took makin this sdl & C app that puts a snake on teh screen. i can do sooo many more things now!!1 like, mayb teh seqel can have 2 snaeks!!!! nd i figrd out long teh way, durin all teh time i cldnt figur out how to make it or didnt have teh energies to make it, taht the snak game needs food to growe teh snake!! i nvr thout o dat b4.'

werehas w teh ai, ur lik 'ok i got tihs snake on teh screen nd u can turn it w teh arow keys. now i can ad anotr snak and maiyb sumthin 4 teh snakes 2 eat.' it r done in 2 days!11

c james... u stil think o new tings to ad... teh ai's mak teh whole thng tak less time 2 make is all. mayb this r betr! u can actly giv things 2 ppl to use nd tehy can b like 'hey tat snake game r rly cool maybe it culd hav rooms u can go in!!!' w teh old setup, u r like 'tat r a gud idea, just wait anotr year and ill hav it', and tey r lik 'watev jams'. but w teh new one, u r lik 'that idea r sooo cool, here it is!11!' evbody is hapy james!11 well mayb evbody excep 4 u.

Those things may work, but that doesn't mean that they'll be good.

how manys things do a dev make durin teh dev proces taht r no gud james? do most o dem even work!?!?? ur sayin 'a program i made after alllll tihs time r betr tahn 1 sombodies made in a short amt of time'. tats wat wed expect james... but wat wld hapn if u took a long time usin teh ai's?!? u mite hav somethin tats rly good.

w teh whole delibrate deal. ur like 'oh i thot bout it rllly hard so taht meens it r gud'. u dont know evthing james... u dont evn know most tinhgs. most ppl dont eithr! mayb andy hertzfeld is a grate software guy who can do tihngs betr tahn teh ai's but ur not him!! dere r only a few ppl who r grate software ppl james. ur woryin all teh time bout 'oh noes wat if tihs r rly bad and sombodies or teh ai's break it???' if teh ai's break it mayb tehy can fix it too james... can u do betr shiftin ur car manual tahn teh automatic thing??

Incidentally, economically this is an example of taking money from below - small-time craftsmen - and giving it to "big tech" megacorporations, via subscription fees and government incentives for their work. If you are for the 'little guy' in any meaningful sense, you also have to be for the little guy who has taken the time to care about what he is doing.

how many clothesppl nd shoeppl nd furntureppl r u buyin from james? ya it r sad taht ppl who spent allll tehr time figurin out how 2 do somethin teh hard way r not goin to be gettin big advantge. but taht is how it is jams. u cant change it. anyways if teir skils r so grate like u say tehy can stil be sucesful. if waht tey do isnt any bettr tho than whats alrdy ben done then was it worth allll taht time?? think o how much time ppl spend lerning and doin these things james. by savin all dat time we r savin lives!11!

on the subscripts u know tat there are lots o ai's now. u dont need ai subscriptn anymore. tat r teh whole pt o teh big 'ai pc' thing james. there r llamas n tihngs. but evn if teh ai company is makin monies so wat? they r doin a public servic!! tehy help waaaay more ppl than u spendin 5 years on ur tictactoe game will.

If I don't like a human's writings (or many people's writings) and don't want to read them as-is, I can avoid them altogether, or filter out the more objectionable parts on my own. But if I don't like bot writings, I am increasingly stuck.

how many ppls posts do u read james? is it just a few? if it r just a few wat diff does it make if there r lotsa bot posts? ur goin to hav to go out o ur way anyway.

That's not to say that humans don't lie, or can't be mistaken, but there is some limit on how much they can do so. There's a different economy of scale with LLMs, our limitless lie machines.

wernt u just sayin taht humans r betr writers? if tahts so tehn mayb tey r bettr liars too.

ppl lie or r wrng all teh time james. tat is tru w human writins and w teh ai writins. it r how it r. i dont rly think theres much difrence... tho mayb teh ai's will admit tey r wrong.

instead of automatically having to suffer through someone else's choice

tihs r assumin ppl r goin to b usin the ai's in ways taht r obnoxus james... r tehy obnuxus??? isnt that just ur opinon?? i dont think im sufring

the latter being disrespectful by implying that people should have asked a bot in the first place instead of actually talking to each other.

no offens james but i think u are readin waaaayy 2 much into it. ur assumin bad thins when ppl r tryin to help.

so say some1 asks a questin lik 'heyy how can i get teh toilet to stop floodin?!?' i hav no idea but i ask chatgpt n it says 'ya u needa turn teh thing on the thing' and tehy do it and it works!!1 hows taht bad?

bsides waht diff do it make weder a bot said it? spose u say 'hai tester im lookin up teh captals o teh sovet states. i wonner how many tehre were???' i go look it up in my encycpedia and r like 'hai james teh encyclopeda britanca saiz there were 15'. hows that diffrent from lookin it up on a bot james? if its true its true isnt it? who cares wethre i got it outa my 30 vol set of encycpedas nd suppments or off chatgpt? isnt it beter to get teh truth than to b like 'wellll i dont got my encycpedia handy so i duno. sorries!1 mayb u can look it up somewheres'

#7

Random Access / My linux box musings.

Last post by Verdauga - Oct 17, 2026, 06:59 PM

I more or less have my slackware machine set up how I want it, but I'm still adding polish here and there. On the hardware side, I still want to get an AMD graphics card-- it's more powerful and plug-n-play with Linux than my nVidia card.

recently, I finally put my browser in a sandbox (James in particular knows how concerning it is how long I've gone without that) and added .webp thumbnail support to my ROX Filer.

I keep running across base linux programs-- mplayer, display, animate-- and they keep supporting increasingly bizarre file-types. I found out mplayer can play .3gp video files! Why!? But I'm not complaining in the least xD

#8

General Discussion / Re: LLMs and LLM policies

Last post by Verdauga - Oct 17, 2026, 06:55 PM

    I have to agree with James on this one, Tester. I haven't found a use for generative AI that isn't better done thro' some other method-- perhaps GAI is 'cheaper', but that's a different point to be debated.

    Aside from that, the amount of misinformation, and the readiness of people I know offline to accept and run to GAI to solve their problems, makes me incredibly concerned.

    My two personal largest issues with AI is that using reduces how much uses community-- it helps separate people-- and how people are less often learning how to do things themselves.

Now please excuse me while I go do long division on a napkin.

#9

General Discussion / Re: LLMs and LLM policies

Last post by James G. - Oct 07, 2026, 12:21 PM

in teh past teh big biznez were takin ovr evthing!!1 teh lil guys cldnt compet w/all taht.

This is beside the point of whether LLM content in posts should be accepted on a forum, but I'll engage. This argument presumes that there is a competition. It's true that small-time developers aren't making 3D first-person games, but they never did. Indie style and corporate style have coexisted for decades. Audiences have proven to be very understanding - and even appreciative - when developers work within their limitations.

but now it r bcomin fair... w/ai u can do wat u r good at nd not hav to b like 'oks i got tihs grate idea now i just need pro artists and pro muzakshuns and pro-gramars and mayb den in 3 years u can c it'.

It's true that difficulty of development hinders ideas from coming to life. I contend that LLMs do worse by forming only an idea, the original one. The person never goes on a journey where they struggle with the meaning and purpose of their work, and have no opportunity to learn or improve as they go. How many dramatic productions have been improved by the input of the actors, past what the writer or the director originally planned? This ensures that you get, at best, what you initially expected, nothing better.

now houswifes can make workin programs and printouts in a day!!1 y b upset tat ppl can get tihngs done james???

Those things may work, but that doesn't mean that they'll be good. By encouraging this kind of development, we deincentivize quality and deliberation, and by pushing from below, edge out people who offer correct implementations of something.

Incidentally, economically this is an example of taking money from below - small-time craftsmen - and giving it to "big tech" megacorporations, via subscription fees and government incentives for their work. If you are for the 'little guy' in any meaningful sense, you also have to be for the little guy who has taken the time to care about what he is doing.

well arnt bot posts clean and logcal?!? it r improvmnt!!!

They are generally clean, but just because I don't want to read profanity-laced tirades doesn't mean that covering up all human output with mass-produced bot material is the way to go. If I don't like a human's writings (or many people's writings) and don't want to read them as-is, I can avoid them altogether, or filter out the more objectionable parts on my own. But if I don't like bot writings, I am increasingly stuck.

Besides, even if bots are better - let's say more moral - in that specific area, they can be worse in other areas. For example, bots often say things that are incorrect or misleading. If we fill the web with that output, we tend to disadvantage truth. That's not to say that humans don't lie, or can't be mistaken, but there is some limit on how much they can do so. There's a different economy of scale with LLMs, our limitless lie machines.

im sooo good at writin taht i dont need ai but if otter ppl wanna use it tats ok w me... shldnt ppl be 3 to choos james?

They can choose, by going someplace else where that is permitted. But I would say that if I want Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini's opinion, I should be free to ask it, on my own time, instead of automatically having to suffer through someone else's choice to either present bot writing as their own, or to clearly label it as such - the former being dishonest, the latter being disrespectful by implying that people should have asked a bot in the first place instead of actually talking to each other. Given that some decision must be made one way or the other, and that there are plenty of sites out there where LLMs are allowed, I don't find the freedom argument compelling here.

#10

General Discussion / Re: LLMs and LLM policies

Last post by Tester - Oct 06, 2026, 04:17 PM

i totes dont agree jams. in teh past teh big biznez were takin ovr evthing!!1 teh lil guys cldnt compet w/all taht. but now it r bcomin fair... w/ai u can do wat u r good at nd not hav to b like 'oks i got tihs grate idea now i just need pro artists and pro muzakshuns and pro-gramars and mayb den in 3 years u can c it'. now houswifes can make workin programs and printouts in a day!!1 y b upset tat ppl can get tihngs done james???

also ur big on posts meetin standards... u dont like most o teh web as it r rite?? tats y u set up tihs site. well arnt bot posts clean and logcal?!? it r improvmnt!!! if u wuldnt wanna read ppls websites anyways den how can u b liyke 'lets get rid o all teh bot posts tey r so bad'. teh ai's r makin teh web better!!!!

im sooo good at writin taht i dont need ai but if otter ppl wanna use it tats ok w me... shldnt ppl be 3 to choos james?