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Gemini Links 04/05/2023: IDEs Reviewed, Chatbots Debunked



  • Games

  • Technical

    • IDE Shopping

      Emacs was the first alternative I tried, really just because I know some people are able to really get into it and turn it into something powerful.

      I learn new tools best by finding a good starter config and making tweaks until I'm familiar enough where I could do it from scratch. I learned tiling window managers this way and am now currently using my own unique config, and it's also how I got into Linux in the first place by starting with Ubuntu Gnome (back when Unity was still the default DE) and eventually finding my way to Arch. So to tackle Emacs I set myself up with a popular configuration framework called Doom Emacs.

      [...]

      If you're interested in the differences between Vim and Neovim you're probably better off having someone else explain them to you. But from what I understand, Neovim is just a fork of Vim that's meant to be more maintainable and allow for more powerful plugins.

      After looking into and trying a couple different starter configs for Neovim, I eventually settled on LunarVim. Now LunarVim isn't so much a starter config. The project's website describes it as an "IDE layer for Neovim with sane defaults", and because LunarVim installs itself alongside your existing Neovim install and separates the user's config from its own, I'd say that feels accurate.

    • Pumpkin Patch

      Today I saw Brodie Robertson's latest video on the latest systemd feature, where you can reboot only the user space. I think that is pretty cool and welcome it's development. However, I can't entirely think of scenarios where it would be needed, I mostly reboot because I want to reboot my entire system. AFAIK the user space reboot is everything except the kernel, so I guess one would use it when you undergone a "standard" update of packages, mostly?

    • Science/Sci-Fi

      • The Forth

        That was from last year, but I remembered it was forth day too late this year and didn't have any ideas for something that could be quickly churn out.

      • Proof That ChatGPT Is Not Sentient

        There’s a childish variation of the Turing Test that ChatGPT fails today.

        Simply parrot whatever ChatGPT says.

        Then keep doing it.

        It won’t notice what you’re doing, and it won’t get bored or frustrated.

        If you’ve never played this game, find any sentient being and try it. But I suspect you already know how it should go.

        QED.

        [...]

        If you’re not convinced, just keep repeating. It must eventually become clear to you that there is nothing behind the curtain—just as it will never become clear to (this iteration of) ChatGPT that something untoward is going on.

    • Internet/Gemini

      • Metaverses

        I am perpetually late to the party. andi (@mcc on cohost), who I sort of peripherally knew-of when she was on Twitter, posted an essay in the early bird-migration days at cohost, on the various ideas of the metaverse: Stephenson's original conception, Facebook's ambitions (largely jettisonned), and others.

        [...]

        In some sense we've reached feature parity, thirty years later. We've also got the same level of control over our own identities on the platform, which is to say, barely any at all; we can choose to use the platform or not, but if we go, that's it. We can't take our Instagram data and import it elsewhere, not in any meaningful sense. We're stuck with apps and no overarching protocol.

        The Fediverse is a partial answer to that, allowing social verbs or ideas that work across a variety of platforms. But as you may have seen when trying to convince your mutuals to make the move to Mastodon, it comes with a tradeoff. It's not as instinctively simple as shitposting on Twitter. It requires people to think a little bit about their data and interactions. Most people don't want to do that, and so Mastodon won't take off until Twitter's last day. Maybe after that we'll start to see people other than idealistic free software types and disaffected tweeps in the Fediverse.

      • Writing process

        Like many geminauts, I've coded my own content management script.

        [...]

        Now, this assumes that I am to write and publish my text in the same session. This doesn't necessarily encourage afterthought and reflection.

        My last post "broke" my content management script. A geminaut very kindly sent me a message to tell me. I was very grateful, but also, it made me realize that people actually read my posts... which I should have expected, right? That is, after all, why I write?

        Certainly, but I suspect that actively ignoring that fact was what made it possible for me to write without getting caught in doubts and anxiety. But if I am to become a better writer, I also need to think about the audience, about the necessary context I have to include and the unnecessary grumbling I can spare them. Therefore, I need a bit more space to think, or at least some space to have distance.

        I'll try to implement something like a 12- or 24-hours quarantine. This way, I get a chance to revise posts before sending them. But also, since it's a one-time quarantine, I don't get to revise indefinitely. Maybe it's more akin to having an editor (except it's me). A busy one, who doesn't want back and forth.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



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