Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Clair de lune

    I took piano lessons for about seven years as a child. My instructor was the organist at my local church, a pianist with more than 60 years experience, who wanted to take me on as an apprentice to become the next church organist after he retired. He was an extremely talented man, and I loved my lessons with him, but becoming a professional musician was not where I wanted to go in life. He passed away after I had left the city to attend university.

    At his funeral, the pastor shared a story about asking the organist if there were any piano songs he felt he'd mastered. He responded with only one piece: Claude Debussy's "Clair de lune." Shortly before he died, the pastor arranged and filmed the organist giving a small recital of the piece. The pastor then played his performance during the funeral service. His rendition was flawless, and when I heard it, I couldn't hold back a tear.

  • Happy Equinox!

    At about 18:20 UTC this last day, the Equinox officially happened! Something I quite like about the Equinox is that EVERYWHERE on Earth gets a day length of about 12 hours and 10 minutes (that ~10 minutes is due to refraction during the sunrise and sunset, meaning the light from the Sun bends a bit, allowing us to see the Sun for a little bit of time even when it is under the Horizon).

    If you want a longer day, just head West fast enough! There was a game for the Wii U (probably for PC as well) called "Race the Sun" which essentially had this as a premise. The Sun is setting and you are driving a solar powered vehicle, so you need to race towards the Sun as long as possible to keep powered.

  • the sweetest

    take my heart to hold
    help carry the weight
    and I will carry yours
    darkness and all
    
    
    thread your soul to mine
    be the flicker of light
    and I will be the warmth
    comfort in the night
    

• Technology and Free Software

  • Photronic Arts

    Still unemployed and lost even the temp job now. Finances are starting to become an urgent problem. The tech industry lost it's moral compass ages ago, but in recent years, it's been shifting away from moral ambiguity straight up into active evil on purpose. As an experienced software developer and systems engineer, I'm sure I could find employment, albeit for less money than in the past, in worse conditions, and, indeed, for a harmful company. And that last bit is the real problem. It's become near impossible to find any employment for a company that doesn't participate (or often these days they outright mandate) AI useage.

    [...]

    Even when we look beyond the commercial world, and look closer at the open source community, and even the Free Software communities (or what's left of them), you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who actively opposes AI use.

    [...]

    2) I have been dissapointed with the FSF's response to the rise of "artificial intelligence" within the software world (or perhaps, the lack thereof). We are facing a situation where any GPL-licensed copyleft code that was ever published in any way obtainable on the internet, has been ingested by algorithms, to be later regurgitated into proprietary products for profit.

    [...]

    To conclude: Given that clearly the FSF's values do not align with my own on a matter that is of utmost importance to the future of software, and given that I'm not really in a position with extra income anymore, canceling my recurring payment, and in the future, come renewal time, my membership, seems like the most reasonable and logical course of action.

    [...]

    If all the above paints a grim picture, it should. The world is ending. Just when we're at a climate crossroads, the tech world decided to double-down on LLM's, the worst way one could possible compute when it comes to carbon output. Creativity and ingenuity has been distilled down to a commodity to be rented from your corporate robot service, robbed of all humanity.

    [...]

    Anyway, employment-wise, I don't see any way I can continue in this industry, at all. So as I had mentioned at the end of my vcfmw retrospective, I've started an art business in an attempt to escape the tech world. I can't say it's going well so far, but I'm hoping it will turn around when we start attending events with a booth to sell stuff.

  • Perception Cognition

    EVE Online is a mix of cognition and perception. In some large and early fights the camera was pointed away from the fight so that CPU was not wasted trying to draw the thousands of ships and explosions and whatnot, therefore the thinking went, less lag. Isn't there then nothing to perceive? No, there's still a list of symbols in the overview that indicate ship distances, type, who is flying them, etc., and from that list suitable targets can be selected. Or fleet broadcasts can be used, in which case the thing to shoot (or heal) next can be selected from another list rather than trying to perceive it in the mess of ships on screen. In theory you can click on things in space, but that's difficult as the wee little icons are small and may be moving and may be mixed in with other clickables. Maybe this is more practical for folks with better mouse skills?