Plenty of search overview results I get on Google report false information with hyperlinks directly to the page in the vendor documentation that says something completely different, or not at all.

So don’t worry about writing that documentation- the helpful AI will still cite what you haven’t written.

If it helps, Macintosh Garden has a FTP server, but everything is un-organized in one of 2 folders, apps and games. Too slow to get a directory listing on these older systems but you can get a file directly if you know what you’re looking for.

Very cool and much needed. I run an iMac G3 on OS 9, and it’s a bit of a challenge to download files on because most websites don’t work, and the FTP directory listings on Macintosh Garden are so long that they never finish loading for me. Granted it’s nothing compared to the file transfer difficulties of the past, but it’s nice to see a period-correct workaround.

I can post a text file of apps and games if you want, or a directory with txt files split by letters.

Oh, that’s quite alright, the way I do it is to browse the site on my phone which lists the file names for each download, then just type them in to the FTP program. You really need to browse the site to know what everything is, anyhow, as there are multiple downloads for each program- demos, different languages, patches etc. Thank you though!

There’s so much value in consistent, expertly-written technical documentation that outsourcing it to the hallucination machine is a pointless exercise in aggravation. I do not wish to read machine-mangled slop. I want an expert to write expertly.

I am afraid the choice in many OSS projects is not slop vs expert-written content but LLM-assisted content or nothing.

I recently produced a bunch of migration guides for our project by pointing Claude 4 Sonnet at my poorly structured Obsidian notes (some more than 5 years old), a few commits where I migrated the reference implementation, and a reasonably well-maintained yet not immediately actionable CHANGELOG. I think the result is far from top-notch but, at the same time, it is way better IMO than nothing (nothing being the only viable alternative given my priorities): https://oslc.github.io/developing-oslc-applications/eclipse_...

This doesn't create slop. It's just an automated editor. A linter for natural language.

> I never have and I never will!

That’s an odd flex to roll with for someone who has long been a member of a community of technology enthusiasts, but you be you.

LLMs are tools, not religions. They don’t need to be elevated to a dogmatic level.

I agree with this. I have a normally inquisitive friend who, in response to his trade being threatened by AI, has decided that it's all a horror and he would rather avoid even reading or trying anything from the AI landscape. Bit like "I'd rather be unemployed and starving than have anything to do with all that."

All of my trades are likewise threatened, but I've found various AI options to be useful augments or interesting toys. Things like having ChatGPT check if a particular game already exists, or analysing cost/effort of lining a shed with gyprock vs ply, or analysing a chicken orchard with steel or timber, or instantly culling lists of extraneous options, or summarising someone's public writings on a particular topic, name ideas in various languages. If you have an experience eye to review suggestions, it's fantastic. Or having CoPilot/similar quickly juicing up a web page - something I could do manually, but would rather save time. Or learning how to build a game in a different language.

I guess I don’t see it as merely technology about which I might be reasonably enthused. Everything cool becomes bad or harnessed for evil in rather short order these days. The destructive potential of widespread deployment of LLMs seems so obvious that I don’t see why anyone would rush employ it in their work, let alone book a trip to a Meta-hosted hypefest for it.

>I don’t see why anyone would rush employ it in their work, let alone book a trip to a Meta-hosted hypefest for it.

These are very different propositions.

You probably already use various code automation tools in your work. At the lower end, Copilot is exactly that, just a bit smarter.

You write "const [getFoo, set" and it autocompletes "Foo] = useState(". Who wouldn't want that?

It's entirely within your control how far you stray into adopting code that you don't thoroughly understand or haven't thoroughly vetted.

I wish QtCreator didn’t require a commercial license for their LLM integration.

Do you have any suggestions for a linux-based, qt-tolerant, LLM-integrated IDE? I’d love to try one.

Some of us are still using punch cards and never changed /s

I was that way about a year or two ago. The stuff is moving fast, the water is warm. Unless your objections are rooted in privacy or some other perceived misdeed, I say give it a whirl.

If nothing else, use Dall-E to draw stupid pictures to make you and friends laugh. :)

Okay

We don’t need to “live with this”. We can just not use them, ignore them, or argue against their proliferation and acceptance, as I will continue doing.

Technically, you are right. Donald Knuth still doesn't use e-mail, after all.

But for the global "we" entity, it is almost certain that it is not going to heed your call.

This is "anti-progress", and we must always pursue progress even if it leads us to a self-made reality-melting hellmouth. Onward to Wonderland, I say!

Gotta love "progress" as the ultimate goal. Ignore how you got here, whether you made a wrong turn, or even if you're happy as-is and don't need to change. Just keep pushing forward and moving around the deck chairs!

I want to use them. Lots of other people do, too. Feel free to get left behind.

You're assuming that the ending is already written and the long term value of LLMs is already known.

Someone not using them could get left behind if LLMs turn out that to have a consistent multiplier effect on productivity. That person also may not actually care about being "left behind".

Someone not using them could also save a bunch of time and effort if LLMs don't pan out and don't add a meaningful value over the long run. That's not to say they don't add any value, LLMs could be relegated to the role of a much better predictive text engine that gets used regularly but isn't itself a large enough gain to leave anyone behind for not using predictive text.

Don Hopkins, who also posts here, has an interesting essay on the design and implementations of pie menus from 1991: https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-design-and-implementation-...

What, exactly, do you get out of doing something like that? As an intellectual exercise I understand probing to see what exactly is accessible on a “blocked” connection, but intentionally wasting bandwidth seems the virtual equivalent of leaving the taps running in a public restroom to waste water, or perhaps clogging the toilet and overflowing it.

It reminds me of working on campus IT, and the sort of person who, at the end of the semester realize there are pages remaining in their "free print" allotment, print out every page completely covered in black ink to waste as much as possible.

I worked at a company that would provide "free pizza" during evenings to encourage people to stay a little later and get more work done. It wasn't long before people would simply grab armfuls of food, entire pizza boxes, and bring them to their cars, ending that little perk quickly.

That sounds dystopian.

why would anyone do that?? the remaining "free print" sheets is perfectly good scratch paper if you leave it blank!

I have also printed a blank document before to get blank paper, instead of dealing with accessing the paper tray, which may not have been feasible given the circumstances.

They're being a dick plain and simple. Some people are just wired that way.

Presumably because they perceive the operator as gouging/exploiting the captive audience.

Yes, I'd see it as a form of protest.

No one else would, especially not the company or the customers who paid for the service expecting to receive it. They'd see it as vandalism, and they'd be correct.

"The boat operator is charging too much for internet access, so let's ruin internet access for the customers who they've already received payment from! That'll show 'em!"

I ran a public anarchy Minecraft server in high school using a copy of a private server's map that got reimaged each week. Periodically someone would join, spend all day destroying buildings, then explain via a series of messages to nobody that he's only doing this to teach the admin a lesson about anti-grief plugins.

It isn’t being read as a joke because the expectation on this forum is that folks are posting seriously and engaging in good faith. There are enough other comment sections on the net that are full of unfunny jokes that add little value to the conversation.

It's being read as both.

See, the beauty in what we're now calling the joke, is that it's both a joke for those who know, and it's actual valid commentary that meets your expectations of this forum.

It’s not a joke. It’s commentary.

I was pleasantly surprised that my new Dell monitor connects with USB-C cable to to my laptop, and then lets me daisy chain another older Dell monitor off of the first one with a DisplayPort cable. I’ve got power and 2 monitors, plus a full USB-C hub, with just 1 cable into the laptop. So at least Dell has figured it out.