Notices by Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social), page 55

This is probably what’s going on with the hilarious ChatGPT faceplants making the rounds on social media.

People try to fool GPT with esoteric questions, but those are easy for it: if anybody anywhere on the web already answered the question, no problem — and making it esoteric just narrows the search space.

But give it a three-digit addition problem, and there’s no single specific example to match. And GPT can’t turn all those examples into a generalized theory of how to do addition.
8/

I'm now working to get my block layout code compiling. Working through the typechecking failures.

I've now reached testcode!

I've been putting off mentioning job hunt here in case my employer sees it, but you're all literally my best chance to find something better than I can get on Seek.

I know I won't ever find my dream job, but if I don't put what I'm looking at into words, I won't know it if I see it. So this isn't me sneering at jobs that don't match, but just putting out there what I'd love in an ideal world.

Ah, yes: Found a testsuite I can base CatTrap's on! http://www.hixie.ch/tests/adhoc/css/box/block/

@alyssa My response would probably depend on how swamped I'm feeling with the project.

I'd probably investigate to ensure other games aren't facing the same issue. And avoid drawing attention to the bug.

On the other hand quipping that it's canonical to the books that computers don't work around Hogwarts is a good non-confrontational way of dismissing the bug.

idk. I'm going back to bed I guess. But this is a real problem that everyone just shrugs their shoulders on, says that's the way it is, and then goes on to keep assuming how easy it is to learn the tools we've been exposed to the parts of or at least names of, for decades

I'm not angry about this, I'm just like... the last two years I've been thinking a lot about the people I know who've bounced off Computers In General because the people decide everything is easy, and like.

the only way open source stays alive and not eaten by corporate contributors that pull their projects wherever their bosses need is if we start actually giving a shit about new people who ARENT nearly as technical.

I'm technically minded, I've got that ten years of trivia, and I still bounce hard off a lot of projects meant for end-users that make a lot of promises, and then waste two days of my time only for me to realize the lofty ideals aren't met yet.

and *that* is a community issue

I get it takes a lot of work to make good things. So instead I suggest simply not saying how easy things are every single time, because I see it a lot on here, in tech, and in OSS

but instead that like, if we want people to learn these things, we need to be having things where you can peel back the layers, not things where there's a learning cliff if you don't have the prerequisites and ten years of FS/OSS intra-community trivia in your head for why things are named that way

this isn't underestimating people's ability to learn -- I'm coming from the perspective that everyone can learn. The problem is learning takes time and psychological space to stick, and the economics as they currently stand are in opposition to that if you're in most fields other than STEM.

This is different for things that aren't aimed at end users -- I'm not saying everything that can be self hosted or whatever needs to be accessible to someone who doesn't know much.

SJGPlay is an easy to use freeware CD Audio player for DOS, written by Steve J. Gray.

It has all the features you would expect in a CD player plus lyrics capability.

Steve has now released the source code to SJGPlay for DOS as open source, under the CC0 license.

http://www.6502.org/users/sjgray/software/sjgplay/sjgplay_dos.html

a computer is an appliance to most people, when it breaks they just sigh and buy a new one if they can even afford to. getting them out of that mindset? doesn't require something to have sharp corners, it requires it to be easier to use than alternatives

Otherwise, they'll just stay there with the appliance mindset. Which doesn't seem to be peoples' goals.

but like.... your goal is enabling people, not getting people to play with their computer.

if it's not, what are we even doing

I'm not annoyed at anyone in particular but this has been like, an overarching vibe in open source since before I was born.

it's doing the infosec thing where we're blaming users instead of that things weren't caught before then

simplifying things will, of course, mean most people using it will not see the nuts and bolts or control surfaces -- but it doesn't matter, because some of them will and start learning that way. There's enough of them that it being 'productized' is still a net gain in terms of computer knowledge as long as you still leave a cutout for the metaphorical car's hood so it can be opened when people want to work on more than the surface

if you use computers for decades as not even a power-user but as someone who like, knows their way around the OS and where things get saved by default, etc, or how to use the Task Manager in windows for more than killing unruly processes, you're like, 90th percentile at worst of people in terms of computer knowledge

@doctormo Other strong contenders: It would be more than worth taking back some modern codecs! Those could serve a real need back then with the internet speeds of the day!

I'm specifically thinking FLAC & QOI.
https://qoiformat.org

I'd also consider videoformats, but I doubt any of those could run on even a supercomputer in the 1980s...

What is UX? It is taking care to have the impact you want on those who use your software. You'll have influence over them regardless, so please make it a good one!

It is about empathy and attention to detail.

Often the way this is framed is that its about "delivering a great user experience", but given every user is different I don't like this lack of nuance.

@Mer__edith I've got plenty of qualms on all of these points...

I've got *plenty* of entertainment to enjoy...

A last iteration finalizes the results into the desired format, & square-roots them. Otherwise I'm sure that square-root could become a bottleneck. Then cleans up.

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Alternate core logic applies fancier but less memory-intensive calculations to glyph outlines. After its initialization & validation it runs the standard decomposition operation, & chooses a codepath based on whether there's overlaps.

I'll discuss these tomorrow!

3/3 For now!

Then there's methodtables for getting/setting named properties.

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There's utilities for computing square roots, converting 16.16 fixedpoint numbers to a given integral range, & invert signs.

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In another file a similar class has a render method which appears to actually the core logic! After validation & initialization for the given mode this one applies edge-detection to the bitmap filling in those distance values, then runs 4 passes to propagate these distances in each direction.

2/3?