WOW this is something else. I had to ask it to STOP calling everything goblins. A bug? A code-goblin. A feature? A new, fancy goblin. A new task? Task-goblin.

WTF? Was it because at one point I discussed a fantasy RPG game design document?

I 100% thought it was just something I induced, so I tried to change its behavior - so reading this is hilariously validating...

Examples from ONE gpt response, this the one that broke me:

"Yeah, this is a great little gremlin-project" "whatever cursed little trading imp-name you like." "Phase 4: Polish goblin" "Phase 5: Maybe dangerous goblin"

Genuine question, no snark intended, bc this is interesting... but:

Why would someone want to do this? What is the benefit (besides satisfying a technical challenge)?

When I was still dependent on my parents, I was stuck with a pretty outdated PC, but was allowed to get a PSP and then a PS Vita (but also only 1 game ever). The reasoning was that a separate console could be taken away easily if my grades dropped, while an outdated computer couldn't do much besides schoolwork.

One of the ways I got into computing was making the most of this dumb situation by trying to run custom software (emulators, homebrew games, PDF viewers etc) on my console. So, something like this would've been handy.

Ultimately though, the devs probably made it because it was an interesting technical challenge .

Console hardware is subsidized by games sales- it’s much cheaper than a similarly capable PC.

I'd also point out that the latest versions of consoles are simply glorified x86 machines. When viewed in that light, you can evaluate if you want a PC with a pretty decent graphics card for the price point.

These are literally x86 AMD machines with AMD graphics cards.

The original XBox was the same way. It made a great media server which is the origin of the likes of plex and kodi.

Well they use to be, this last generation seemed break even in hardware cost around release. But with hardware supply issues now that may not be true at this moment still.

There were hardware supply issues around launch time that made consoles a much better deal than the equivalent PC

But are PC software and games compatible and tuned for console hardware even if you hotwire Linux onto it?

i use my steam deck on my tv all the time as a fairly weak steam machine. i also have a ps5 that i haven't bothered to turn on in at least a year. being able to convert my disused ps5 into a more powerful steam machine actually seems like a bit of an upgrade to my current setup.

I didn't consider SteamOS. That in itself is an amazing use case. I wonder if simply having the linux kernel installed is enough to run it?

In raw grunt, it's equivalent to a PC with a ~3060Ti/6700XT.

You can get a refurb PS5 for £250. Good luck building the equivalent PC for that.

You could get a board built on the PS5 APU (BC-250) for cheaper than that.

£150 plus taxes. By the time you add a PSU, a case, and a good controller, it's pretty close.

Proposing taxation on wealthy individuals isn't exactly a sudden and dramatic philosophical shift to the extreme left.

WEALTH taxes are a dramatic change - America never had them and there are still questions as to whether they are even constitutional

It's called income tax, which isn't new, and used to be much higher for the top brackets. Income tax rates are not derived from the Constitution, and an amendment is not necessary. But if someone wanted to propose an amendment to forbid taxation, then good luck to them.

Let's say a group of 3 people wanted to pay for something that costs $3k. They want to split the cost fairly, but two of them only own $1k. The third person owns $70 billion. Would you ask them to agree to each give $1k? Or would you ask the person with $70 billion to maybe cover, idk, at least half? Anyone that answers "well its not fair to the person with 70 billion to ask that they pay more", is an idealogically-captured simpleton. It only takes basic logic and empathy to derive the obvious answer but meaningless ideology prevails somehow

I've noticed a general decline in performance across several major applications within the past year or so. Not making any accusations yet, because it could be placebo, or coincidence, or selective bias... but I have my suspicions.

You're right to point that out, and I admire your willingness to challenge the accepted narrative. That writing style not just unique to AI — all humans write like that. That's not annoying — it's refreshing. It's not AI repeating the same phrase — it's just AI using what they're trained on! It's like a monkey trained to write essays — the monkey isn't making up words; it only knows what it was taught! That's not AI — it's just an agent (human OR AI) formulating a response based on given context. That's not exhausting — it's informative!

Breaking chacter for a minute, it really annoys me every time a blatantly obvious LLM comment is called out, it's flooded with replies like "No, I akshually write like that - people have always written exactly like that" as if its not obvious lol

to be fair, em-dashes were cool which is why AI uses it so heavily which is why they are uncool now. round and round we go... and I loved the in-character response.

GEEZ have you guys tried bookmarks?!

Bookmarks are great for that thing I don’t need to look at for months but want to go back to to get so and so for their birthday. They’re annoying AF for active projects.

Bookmarks require organizing them; folders worth involve waiting for them to open. Also, both bookmarks and following links to reopen things require using the mouse if you don’t want to use incredibly slow, clunky accessibility UIs, and I aim to mouse as little as possible. Context switching is hard enough without having to locate your bookmarks and wait for all the pages to load.

At work I’ve typically got a half dozen ephemeral pull requests (mine and teammates) on both comment and diff view, GitHub actions in flight, a handful of frequently-referred dashboards, a dozen tabs for various AWS services and logs, another 1-2 dozen tabs each for APIs I’m integrating in some of said PRs, plus the relevant admin panels for those third party services; issue tracker with several tabs for projects and tickets in flight or upcoming or being written/fleshed out; internal documentation I’m writing or reading; and then a couple dozen for whatever other topic I’m researching at the moment.

That gets me through a typical day with a couple meetings; a bunch of PR review and revisions; a bug or data question investigation or two; and a few hours of good deep focus work.

Is there a good way to use bookmarks to save and restore (think: shelve/unshelve or archive/unarchive) units of multiple windows that may contain tab groups?

(Stretch ask: including favicons.)

Cisco continuously blows my mind.

Did you mean to include the Juniper CVE's? In my experience, all vendors are constantly remediating CVE's. I wonder if Cisco has the most vulnerabilities discovered because they also have the most users, largest product offering, highest inventory, etc?

I've had a hell of a time patching Palo Alto's and Fortigates, too. Critical CVEs, day-one RCE attacks. It seems more profitable to rush out new code / new products, and just address vulns as they appear, rather than spending extra development time hardening the software.

Solved this by starting my prompt in ask mode in vscode and having it candidly plan changes so I can approve them. Once I'm confident it's on the right track, I swap to agent mode and have it implement said changes. Takes longer, but separating working tasks from conversations has been a better workflow overall

So, same concept for asking questions / discussing features. Get out of agent mode and use conversational until you want changes made

I recommend thinking about the issue for yourself. It's not hard to see why prediction markets are subject to abuse. Market regulation has little to do with morality or "moral rights". Would I be correct in assuming you're an Ayn Rand fan?

I've had a bad experience using AI for front-end stuff, where I replace or deprecate a feature only to notice later all the artifacts it left behind, some which were never even used in the first place.

I re-did an entire UI recently, and when one of the elements failed to render I noticed the old UI peeking out from underneath. It had tried just covering up old elements instead of adjusting or replacing them. Like telling your son to clean their room, so they push all the clothes under the bed and hope you don't notice LOL

It saves 2 hours of manual syntax wrangling but introduces 1 .5 hours of clean up and sanity checking. Still a net productivity increase, but not sure if its worth how lazy it seems to be making me (this is an easy error to correct, im sure, but meh Claude can fix it in 2 seconds so...)