erin explains everything: or old erin exposes her ignorance
DuckDuckGo is a search engine focused on online privacy. Unfortunately, they also drank the kool-aid re: generative ai, and seem to think that inaccurate blurbs of text at the top of your screen make search better, not worse. Thankfully us luddites have had an option, we could visit DuckDuckGo NoAI . It's DuckDuckGo without feeding your search query into a language model and hoping it spits out…
Oh yeah, I have a blog. I've been meaning to write more, meaning to say something, anything here. It turns out writing is a muscle that atrophies. It's not just the writing, it's organizing thoughts and ideas into a form that others can understand. It feels like I've let that muscle atrophy. Hopefully maintaining this blog will be a way for me to get that skill back. But what the hell do I…
I’ve launched and relaunched my blog too many times. First with writefreely at blog.kvuzet.org, then again at kvuzet.net using known . Now I’m doing it again, this time with an overengineered static site built with eleventy . So here we are again saying hello. This site was originally going to be more of a professional portfolio, enticing potential employers to give me money. After yet another…
Reply to a post on windowscentral.com Shocking absolutely no one, Microsoft wants a bunch of perfectly good computers thrown in the trash. Honestly, I think we've hit a point where a computer made a decade ago is performant enough for most people and how they use computers. The high requirements for windows 11 are another example of the industry trying to force everyone to replace every device…
Reply to a post on www.404media.co This is an example of AI generated images as “religious” language. It does not matter if the image is real or shows something that is really happening, so long as the posting, liking, and sharing of the image signify membership in a group. In 2016 I was shocked to hear my uncle describe Hillary Clinton as a “radical marxist.” He is educated and surely knows the…
I’ve been continuing to go for a run three times per week since the 5k. At this point, it’s starting to feel like just a habit I’ve picked up. I like it. I like it because it’s something I can do myself with minimal requirements. And for the time when I’m running, I’m completely alone. I’m the kind of person who is most comfortable alone. It’s not that I dislike people, in fact, some of my best…
I’ve had a Microsoft account for a long time, since back when I worked in Xbox customer support. As an open source nerd, I have no love for them, but since I had some things that would cost money to replace on that account, I kept it alive. I haven’t logged into it since I transitioned. Today, for the first time, I had an excuse to. Some friends have a Minecraft server, and I hadn’t touched…
The other day @rose@503junk.house posted this thread about Firefox and how she likes to set it up. It got me thinking that I should share my Firefox setup in full, for those looking for a privacy respecting, simple, comfy browser experience. Some of my opinions will differ from hers, and honestly she’s smarter than me so maybe listen to her, I'm just old and set in my ways. But if you're curious,…
Time to do some laptop surgery! Today we’re putting a classic keyboard into an X230. Before I open the laptop up I need to modify the keyboard slightly. Three pins will need to be covered up. So I've removed the little cover from the media keys and this little plate which holds the cable in place. Using a very tiny bit of electrical tape I’ve covered the second, third, and fourth pins on the…
The first Dead Kennedys record I heard was Frankenchrist. I was 14 or so and decided to check them out after seeing plenty of back patches and t-shirts from kids in the punk scene. I was at the record store, and the only cassette they had in stock was Frankenchrist. I didn’t have a CD player, or if I did, it wasn’t portable. So I went with Frankenchrist on cassette. I remember being mildly…
The logical consequences of the exterminationist rhetoric we’ve been bombarded with over and over again happened today, as we knew it would. Many who are silent today have blood on their hands. They’ll be back tomorrow, “asking questions” and continuing to stoke fear, until the memory of today is overwritten by the next time someone follows their hateful rhetoric to it’s logical conclusion. This…