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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • I was going to ask “What’s your point?” but then I realized that this post isn’t even anti-AI.

    The text of this post highlights anticompetitive business practices that have nothing to do with OpenAI’s business model.
    Straight up - they can’t even use the silicon wafers.

    This is just market manipulation to harm their competition and possibly engage in stock market fuckery. (Micron, which stands to make billions, is largely owned by U.S. based wealth management companies.)

    OpenAI and its business partners stand atop a massive bubble that they are desperate to not have pop. I’m horrified, but kind of impressed at the maneuver.

    You’re throwing stones in the wrong direction.





  • A few years ago I noticed an annoyance with a soundbar I had. After allowing it onto my WiFi network so we could stream music to it, it still broadcast the setup WiFi network.

    While dorking around one day, I ran a port scan on my network and the soundbar reported port 22 (ssh) was open. I was able to log in as root and no password.
    After a moment of “huh, that’s terrible security.” I connected to the (publicly open) setup network, ssh’d in, and copied the wpa_supplicant.conf file from the device to verify it had my WiFi info available to anyone with at least my mediocre skill level. I then factory reset the device, never to entrust it with any credentials again.



  • And it’s an act of constant, willful effort by yourself and your community.

    One neighbor is a rental, they are a large immigrant family and are barely getting along. Property owner lives out of country. Another neighbor thought it would be a fun idea to feed neighborhood stray cats. They wound up creating a very healthy breeding family of raccoons out the run-down garage of the rental. For years their offspring have wreaked havoc in our neighborhood. Every fall I’ve had to call a pest control company to trap the tiny raccoons that are small enough to climb downspouts (the big ones aren’t) and destroy the siding and soffits of my neighbors houses. The cat food guy moved away, I figured out how to occlude the raccoons from my downspouts with ample and unsightly flashing, and along with other neighbors, have built or repaired fencing in in our backyards (mostly because of pets and trespassing neighborhood kids, honestly).
    It seems like the raccoon misadventure has finally concluded. I’m now stuck with damaged soffits that squirrels have moved into (on account of a looming walnut tree that lives in a neighbors yard and is so large it overhangs my roof), and a repair estimate that was $5k a year ago, when I had the garage roof redone but wasn’t sure I’d gotten the raccoon problem licked, so I didn’t want to proceed with those repairs. Who knows what it’ll be now. … yay.






  • I have an FDM printer (Ender 3 clone) that is mostly 2020 aluminum extrusion as the frame. A few years ago I found some 2020 on sale and built a set of shelves for my wife’s plants out of it. (Now - I know. It’s not the most economical use of materials, but it was the middle of winter, and I didn’t want to go work in the garage. Plus the 2020 was on sale.) It’ll support a slew of plants over a 4-foot span (~1.2m) without any sagging or other concerns. It can be wobbly side to side, but that’s a matter of bracing and connectors.