FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

Gather round for the story of the Very Hungry Data Centre...

🧵(1/4)

#datacentre #ai

We took a probabilistic autocomplete engine, slapped a REST API on it, invented 14 incompatible ways to call tools, and built a memory layer held together by duct tape, prayers, and malformed JSON.

The result? A modern cathedral of human ingenuity.

Also, a $300B valuation. Please don't look too closely at the load-bearing JSON.

inserts an "Activate Linux" watermark at the bottom right of your screen

I was reading an essay about the way the centralized powers won the copyright wars of the 1990s and early 2000s. (essay was linked to from p2panda documentation)

https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/this-is-fine/

and ran across this quote:

“How the fuck do so many Zoomers not know how to torrent things?” @Ex_AnarchoAnon

So poll time

Before the advent of TCP (Transfem Communication Protocol), infodump data was often relayed by GGCP (Girl to Girl Copy) via PPP (Puppy to Puppy Protocol) links.

conspiracy theory: Windows 2000 introduced the new theme, “Windows Standard”, with the warmer grey because it defaults to 16-bit High Color and the grey in the old theme, now called “Windows Classic”, has an unfortunate magenta tinge because RGB565 can't do true greys

when the @lisamelton repost hits

🚨 🚨 In four hours, the European Parliament is voting on reinstating Chat Control 1.0. We need 361 MEPs to stand their ground as they did once already. Take action now via https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

#foxesInLove #comic

Source: https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/post/821578529151008768
Copyright: https://foxesinlove.net

Here comes a special boy! It’s Miles! He sees that you’re doing your best and he wants you to hang in there and he’s proud of you!

He’s also a sticker from my recently-launched mini update if you want to invite him into your home!

https://ko-fi.com/samikelsh/shop

#startrek #ds9 #tng #art

I'm just saying, I've been doing this a long time, and I've seen both sides of the "programming is free!" and "programming is expensive :(" coin, so I can assure you, you REALLY want to stay on the "free" side.

computers were invented in the *mumblties* and you had to pay to program them
then in the late 70s, you could finally program them! for free! you just had to own a microcomputer! yay
but then in the 80s and 90s you had to buy compilers, which were expensive
by with the 2000s, rapidly compilers and interpreters became free again. anyone could program, for free!

and then in the 2020s someone invented "programming but you have to pay", again.

DON'T FALL FOR THIS TRAP

concluding this thread with LaserDisc Turtle. his name is Flippy. everybody make more art of Flippy now

concept: a fedi bot you can summon into a conversation whenever someone suggests peltier / thermoelectric cooling as a solution to basically any engineering problem

@whitequark Alright, I've been thinking about it (never a good idea), and here's an attempt at that argument. Note that I'm not an expert on industrial revolution history or any of the technologies I'm about to discuss, so… y'know.

Of all the inventions of the industrial era, the vapor-cycle heat pump was the closest to optimal at its inception and has remained essentially unchanged to the present day, *and* is a completely essential technology to modern life. It's probably not the most *foundational* invention (the steam engine probably takes that crown), but I assert that it is the *greatest*.

For example, the steam engine is a dead technology today.

Or for another example, consider the piston-driven internal combustion engine. Foundational, yes, and ubiquitous in the modern day; but thermodynamically, it's just fundamentally inefficient. We've milked damn near every possible joule of heat recovery out of it, but the only thing it's really good at is low-power efficiency; for essentially every other purpose, the gas turbine is superior. In contrast, *nothing* is superior to the vapor-cycle heat pump at pumping heat.

(The gas turbine, an incredibly simple and effective technology which in its most basic form has *one moving part*, is another contender for greatest invention, but… the externalities of combustion are inescapable.)

So yeah. The refrigerator emerged in the mid-1800s and is essentially unchanged since. Advances in chemistry have greatly improved refrigerants, but the basic structure is still a compressor, condenser, and evaporator all in a loop. It's effective, efficient, free of inherent externalities (the nastiness of fluorocarbons aside, in correct operation they're not *supposed* to leak refrigerant, and simple propane actually works perfectly fine), and *massively* impactful to modern life. (Just think how much of our food is utterly reliant on refrigeration, and we don't even think about it.)