Blog - David Helkowski

You'll own nothing, and you'll enjoy bending over

 You may have heard the phrase "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy." The origin is from a Danish politician by the name of Ida Auken in 2016. She wrote a speculative essay for the World Economic Forum titled "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better."

Her timeline has been moved ahead it seems. And the third part of her triad has become inverted.

Sony recently said they are going to cease making games on disc. This is a long time coming. Both Microsoft and Sony tried to go fully digital with game releases for their recent consoles, and the public responded by collecting yelling "fuck that." Yet somehow the bean counters at Sony think they can get away with it now.

And, well, they are probably correct. In Japan you can't even find Xbox One games available for sale in stores, so Xbox is already effectively digital only in Japan.

Nintendo did the whole shitty "game key cards" thing with the Switch 2, and people are going along with it. Because, well, what choice do we have? Bigco does shitty anti-consumer stuff, and we have no real way to stop them.

People will say "vote with your dollar" but that is a load of horseshit when it means doing without the latest games ( or the latest whatever for that matter ).

There are a number of bad trends that have led to the inevitable shit future.

Initially I made these a list but I do think more details are valid to share for those of you who have been living under a rock.

TPMs and locked bootloaders

Nearly all modern phones are locked down and you can't run your own software. This was true for the iPhone from day one, and Apple has worked and worked to try to make it harder for you to jailbreak their devices.

It has been true of the majority of Android phones for a decade. For most Android phones now, even if you own the phone outright, you can't even unlock the bootloader.

Even Xiaomi devices have been heading in that direction in that they have been adding an onerous process to unlock your device. By the time you read this they may no longer offer any process.

Which leads to another crappy thing.

Google is restricting sideloading

Recent news is that Google is adding some sort of shitacular bullshit for sideloading apps. Literally nobody sideloading ever wanted this. But here we are.

It's just another step beyond the crap that already existed where apps can call an api to ensure a phone isn't unlocked or altered in any way AND that it wasn't sideloaded. With that API? If it was sideloaded the app won't work.

You could, of course, modify the app to strip out that crap, but that's a huge pain.

Modern consoles don't let you run your own software

EVEN some aimed at tinkerers such as fpga based systems. There was a recent scandal about that... The scandal being an fpga gaming system suddenly decided to prevent anyone from loading an alternate bitstream to the fpga in the name of safety. The community rightly yelled about this and they are allowing it again. But for how long?

Amazon giveth and Amazon taketh away

...all your ebooks, audio books, etc. And they aren't the only ones. They are denying that we bought anything saying buying is not buying. It's ridiculous.

Yeah yeah okay it is only some ebooks and some audio books. But it included 1984. Really fuckers? 1984. Damn. Burn Amazon burn.

Movies movies and shows just aren't available

Many movies and TV shows can't be bought on disc, and aren't available for streaming ANYWHERE. No wonder people turn to piracy. Even more so with huge regional ( cross country ) delays for release.

Steam denies games are "owned"

Steam denies you are buying games and says that they go poof when you die. Dark.

Not only that but I seem to recall them changing their terms ( along with many other companies ) to have small print that says buying is not buying.

You can't buy Office anymore

Microsoft ceased selling Office. Only subscription now. And MANY companies have gone this way.

Yeah sure you can still buy an old version of Office from them. But for how long? It's already 2 years out of date. And it's full price still.

Nevermind that you can't resell Office. First sale doctrine any? Oh yeah... US is a fucking totalitarian regime. Freedom? Nah.

Stop killing games

Game companies force online only and then abandon the online services once they don't feel like maintaining it, effectively killing games. There is a movement around this "Stop killing games". Often it has nothing to do with online play and is just a way for the company to prevent piracy by shifting random game logic into the cloud.

One of the games that started this shit was SimCity. Hackers figured out how to modify the game to work offline anyway, disproving the whole "but it needs online because [bs reasons]".

Forced firmware updates

From day one.

Online only is used to force firmware updates you don't want. I can't play Mario Kart that came with my Switch 2 because I refuse to ever update past the release firmware. It comes "bundled" with not the game but an activation code embedded into the system which I can never use because I will never put the thing online.

Abandoned dead hardware

Hardware is abandonded ( Cricut ) because they tied it to online crap. Happily there was a recent hacker who managed to make a trashed Cricut work again, but this is the exception not the norm. Millions of devices go to the landfill because of such.

Much hardware is also andonded because companies refuse to release the specs and info to create open source drivers. I have a great Roland Quad Capture. Can't use it on recent MacOS because Roland don't want you to keep using it. They could just build the drivers for the newer MacOS, but they have no interest in that. They want you to buy a newer ADC.

The makers argue "it's too difficult to port the driver to the new updates". Bullcrap. Give me the source code to the old driver and I'll do it my damned self you fucking liars.

Those are just the stuff I thought of immediately and could type out in a few minutes. No research, just crap that comes to mind with no effort. That's how bad things are, and they are getting worse.

I could write a whole book on the shit Nintendo has done. Fuck Nintendo. Ending the online stores for their very recent handheld devices that millions of people still own, just so they can force you to rebuy the original Mario for $x for Switch 2 instead of for $1 or something on your old handheld. It's despicable.

You can still download games you bought through their stores... for now. They've said they will end being able to do that as well. If you didn't buy what you wanted though for Wii, Wii U, 3ds, already, well then you are shit out of luck.

Oh wait. No you aren't. You root their shit and pirate, because fuck Nintendo.

But me? I would never. :)

And their war on emulators? Omg. I can't even.

And sadly it isn't just Nintendo that are evil fucks. It's also Sony, Microsoft, Steam... Every single fucking bigco involved in gaming have been doing anti-consumer bullshit for decades. And we will keep buying whatever crap they shovel, because there is no real other choice.

So bend over and get used to the ass fucking. They think you'll like it. And it's the only type of gaming pleasure that will be available going forward.

AI is complaining that I haven't explicitly shared the exact details and arguments supporting the points I've made. I don't have to, because you are an intelligent person and you too have access to AI. If you don't know about it? Just ask AI why I'm making the claims and it will happily explain for you.

Update: I've caved and added a few details.

I can surely come up with more points.

Please trash your old Kindles

No more support for old Kindles. They just flat out can't be used legally any more for new ebooks. Sure you could jailbreak them but for many of them you'd have to take them apart, ground a debug line, and do technical stuff to do so that is a pain.

Right to repair

The whole "Right to repair" movement. There are countless devices ( Apple... ) where they encrypt-lock the fucking parts to the damned device, so even if you get a replacement part it won't work because they want to force you to buy a whole new device. You can include cars, tractors, and many valuable things affected by this sort of nonsense.

Buy games? Nah. "Free to play"

The movement towards "free to play" and microtransactions instead of just selling us the whole fucking game. This killed off several major series of games including Angry Birds. Huge scandal there with them delisting the original games just to shove in the crap pipe new games.

Yeah yeah Angry Birds caved and released a "rewrite" of the original. Only though as an obvious cash grab imo.

Unreal Tournament

There was a whole decade of joy that I had playing those games. Now Epic is a fucking evil monster of free-to-play trash that I don't even find fun. Pay for skins? WTF. I remember downloading shit tons of user made levels for UT. Now... you can pay for the privilege.

Decompilation PC ports

"Hackers" have now ported tons of old N64 games to PC and made them awesome. Nintendo could do this. Do they? Lulz. Do something gamers want? Lulz.

Bambu gives no fucks about license

3d printer makers illegally making open source forks dependent on the cloud then fucking harassing people stripping out their illegal modifications. Bambu. :cough:

Important people have come out ( just yesterday ) and called these fuckers out on continuing to break the AGPL by doing this shit.

3D printing guns is... illegal? Tf

Totalitarian regimes forcing restrictions onto 3d printers such as preventing US protected rights such as the right to manufacture our own firearms. Sure this is a slight tangent from my gaming points but it is all about locked devices and arbitrary restrictions that go against the premise of the objects we bought. We bought a 3d printer. We should be able to 3d print whatever we like. Does your regular 2d printer refuse to print if you attempt to print some text considered illegal? Obviously not. Does it rat out the text you print to the feds? Probably will soon. Now... most printers are secretly embedding an identifier pattern into your print to track you more easily...

Now look, I get that guns are bad. I live in Japan. Guns are illegal here. So it would make sense for Japan to ban it. But not the US, because in the US you can legally buy a smelter, casts, CNCs, etc and make your own weapons. If you can make a fully metal gun, why not a 3d printed one?

Sure there is an argument that people can hide a plastic gun, but... well... so what? They are also dangerous and likely to blow up in your hand.

Even our chats are locked up

Try to download a chat you've had with ChatGPT, where you in theory own the contents of that chat. You... can't. Try to highlight the whole chat and copy it. Can't do that either. Hmm.

Try to export your messages into a clean format from WhatsApp or even Signal. You can't.

Access to your own emails? Lulz

Try to mirror down your email from Protonmail. I have over 80k emails there. It literally breaks if I try. It doesn't even show how many emails I have. They've literally lost many of my emails.

Supporting old stuff? Fuck no

Try to install an old iOS version on your iPhone.

This is really bad because it makes testing software on older iOS versions a royal pain. I know this because I made an entire business around working around this idiocy.

Anonymous chat? Good luck

Try to sign up for a secure messaging system ( that anyone will agree to use with you ) without providing something that can be connected to your real identity.

There are a few where you can actually manage it, but you probably haven't heard of them.

I drifted away from my main point pretty far but for good reason. Things are heavily restricted in a bad way. Companies do everything in their power to force you to buy their new shit and to lock you into their stuff.

This is really bad, and it is only and constantly getting worse.

Thankfully some few people are fighting to continue enabling gaming at least. We have MisterFPGA. We have Analogue products, and now some other companies making fpga based systems.

We have hackers. People like me who will continue reverse engineering systems and software to keep them usable. But we get no thanks. Barely any support.

Support your local hacker. ;)

Codesphere Weenies

Preface

I've worked for a large number of companies over my career. I've been treated badly at many of them. I've had to get entangled in legal action with a number of them. I do share some of those stories to people I know, but for the most part I don't tend to share t...

Magnus Midtb0

 Recently I've been watching some YouTube videos. Yeah yeah I know this is horrible for me and an utter waste of my time, but what is done is done and I now have to live with the consequences.

One of the consequences is that I now have a few Magnus Midtb0 videos living rent free in ...

Hit Pieces Suck

 I recently spotted this article: Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live by some dipshit at The Verge.

As you know I enjoy shitting on things. I'm particularly happy and feel justified to shit on people shitting on other people.

...

My Outlook

 I don't often articulate what I believe and why, because it is a mixture of subtle things in reality.

I don't mean what I believe about the meaning of life, religion, politics, and any such conveniently namable ways of thinking with reasonable options that are approved of by societ...

Antichrist as a Service

 I noticed some months ago that what is happening with AI is similar to things stated in the book of Revelation. I just sort of dismissed the idea without really considering it much, because I just didn't see the correlations or why making that comparison would be useful.

I've ...

GrapheneOS Duress at Customs

 Just saw this article about someone using GrapheneOS giving the CBP a duress passcode to wipe his phone instead of the real...

Sudoku 17 Clues

 I'm steadily making progress with my Sudoku game. I've become a little distracted with doing all the software things sudoku in the process.

I learned that it was proven in 2012 ( then published in 2014 ) that Sudoku puzzles require at least 17 clues in order to lead to a singl...

Obey the law you bastards

 I used to think that the important thing is to do what is moral and right regardless of what the law says.

I used to be in support of breaking the law when the law is wrong.

I'm not any more. Fuck that. You who enjoy getting your lives fucked, go ahead. I'm not stopping you from ...

AI is past the tipping point

 In recent past I thought to myself that AI will be the death of humanity because it will inevitably continue to improve and continue to have harmful effects as it already has but worse.

I realized something yesterday. It isn't that AI will become able to ruin humanity. It's that it...

From Windows to MacOS

 I've been using Microsoft operating systems and MS compatible machine for a very long time. I can clearly remember MS-DOS 6.0 coming out and getting it and monkeying with doublespace and thinking it was ridiculous. I was using DOS before that. I was 11, so that dates the beginning of...

Building a Sudoku game

 Recently I was craving to play a video game. I have... hundreds of thousands of games at my disposal. And none of them are what I want.

So I went seeking a new game to play. I ended up on Thinky Games. They are actually a neat organization imo. I browsed through their games an...

Flockery

 You may have heard about Flock cameras and the controversy surrounding them. Or maybe not. You might live underneath a rock. Or in a better country than the shithole known as the USA, or "land of the fee" as I like to call it, and thus not care about whatever crap goes on in the US. ...

Add Ads

 I have a couple of video games in the works. One of the most recent ones I was talking to a friend of mine about and pondering what I can do to release it and get attention to it initially.

You see one of the problems in releasing any kind of software as a nearly unknown software d...

Dialpad Woes

 I've been using and paying for Dialpad for years.

I moved to Dialpad after Google Voice decided to screw me over by dropping my Google Voice number arbitarily. You see I used to use Google Voice as my consistent number so that I would never lose my GV number. Until they just u...

Google Can't Code

 Google, or at least the team behind YouTube, is shit at coding.

My evidence for this?

Starting about a month ago I noticed the following sequence happen on YouTube:

Institutions Only Do Right At Ease

 I believe that institutions, which includes governments and any large societal structure for my statement, only do the right thing out of ease in doing so and self benefit for the institution.

Essentially, I don't believe that institutions at scale are ever primarily sacrificially ...

YouTube Idea - DDS

 A few weeks ago I came up with a new idea. I call it DDS for short. Which stands for "David Does Stuff."

The essential idea is that I make videos of myself doing things and put them all on YouTube.

Ground breaking.

I know.

But there is a little more to it. I often b...

Signal Cooperates with Governments

 The title of this is my belief. You can disagree all you want but I believe it and I will tell you why.

In it's simplest form, I believe this because Signal requires you to not only give and verify your phone number to get a Signal account, but ALSO requires you to maintain access ...

Is Democracy Deception?

 Democracy is popular. Many large countries including the US supposedly follow it. Those who do follow it claim it is the only sane way.

Is a Democracy any different than a Republic? Consider the US. In the US I would argue there is no meaningful difference because the machiner...

Dialpad Donkeys

 I have been using Dialpad for over 5 years now. I initially signed up for it to gain a "legit" company business phone line for my company.

In all the years of running my own company I think I've received 10 meaningful business related calls on that number.

When I moved ...

Modern browsers are shit

 In my last post I explained to you that Google Chrome ruined the modern internet for all of us by being too capable.

By that I do not mean that Google Chrome is well made. In fact I think the opposite. I think it is shit. And I'm going to tell you why.

But why stop ther...

Chrome killed the internet

 Are the gears in your head turning yet? Trying to imagine why I think Google Chrome is terrible and is the thing that ruined the internet?

You are thinking it is because Google right? Because of evil Google?

Wrong. Lol.

Chrome killed the internet because... Chrome wor...

Is piracy justified?

 I recently watched this Louis Rossmann video titled ... piracy is COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED

I have thoughts about pirating media such as movies and music.

First of all some context.

I own over 500 bluray movies and ...

Trump Scum Pool

 You've likely seen news about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the "repairs."

I have thoughts.

The first is that this thing is hardly new. It was build in 1923. It is over 100 years old.

My question is why there is any issue in maintaining this thing. It's made out...

Domestic Terrorism Coming Soon

 I recently saw this article that essentially claims that AI will eventually result in people not having to do information work. Basically the article is arguing that white collar labor is going to vanis...

What I believe

 I've often critiqued things. I've often lamented the failures of various belief systems. I've critiqued many things to death pointing out their flaws.

What I don't often do is state what I actually do believe. Even when I attempt to I often end up comparing it to other things ...

Appeal to Humanity

 You may have heard of the logical fallacy "Appeal to Authority." The general idea there is that it is logically incorrect to say "I'm an authority on this therefore what I just said is accurate."

You see, saying that you are correct about something because "you know about that kind...

Donki Honey Jim Beam

 Today I was at Don Quijote and I saw a sign on the shelf for Jim Beam Honey for 880 yen after tax. I did the loose calculation and thought to myself "$5? That's a good deal"

The only issue?

There were no bottles behind the sale sign. There was though a Tennessee Honey Jim Be...

Robin Williams Lewy Bodies

 The latest news, if we can call it that, that I've been seeing is that Robin Williams didn't kill himself. He died of Lewy Bodies.

I saw this and went "wtf are they talking about." I read about it. I read a bunch of comments.

I initially concluded "whatever," but on thinking...

Japanese cities to not avoid

 I recently watched half of this video on YouTube: Japanese cities to avoid at all costs

I perhaps have fallen for the intent of the video which is to be absolutely fucking ridiculous such that people complain that your ...

Profanity is Juvenile

 I've long thought that using profanity is juvenile, immature, distasteful, and indicative of having poor self control, low self esteem, and low IQ.

As the saying goes, "Profanity is a crutch for the inarticulate." If you can't express what you are saying with intelligence, fin...

Brew is a steaming shitpile

 I've long hated brew / homebrew, as you could likely guess from the title of this post.

First the basic reasons:

Decoersion and Incentives

 I talked previously about Decoersion. Go check that out for context.

In that description I explained that something is coercive or not based on whether there is force to make a person agree or act the way you want or not.

That is insufficent to cover what I actually mean by ...

Controlling iPhones

 I've spent over 5 years of my life researching and making software and systems to control iOS devices.

I sell a product that does this well: ControlFloor

Almost no one has bought a license for my product in the last 8 months. I can't survive ...

University Prerequisites

 Before I went to a 4-year university I took one semester of classes at a local community college to just see how it is and get a feeling for it all.

Of the classes I took that semester one was Calculus. I listened very attentively. I took detailed notes. I learned all the mate...

This invasive test is mandatory

 I was homeschooled through all of middle-school and high-school. The result of this is that I'm a raging lunatic. No wait. I'm supposed to say the result is that I'm the bestest educated now. Urr. Nevermind.

The result of this is that I learned how to learn very well because after ...

Corporate Black Sludge

 I've worked for MANY different companies as a software person. One thing all of these companies had was coffee machines. Some were better than others.

Here is the range of black sludge I've experienced at work:

Behavior not empathy

 In my last post I spent a significant number of words pointing out the Amazon is severely lacking in empathy and care for humans.

I would like to argue a partial flipside to this, against empathy as the thing that matters.

You see, the issue is that empathy on the face of it...

Amazon Lunkhead Points

 Full disclosure: I worked for the devil for a little under 2 years. So I'm gulty of associating with these horrible schmucks. That doesn't, though, mean that I approved of their crimes even while working for them. I needed money, what can I say?

That said, after having tainted...

In the Grey Sludge

Tags: movie

I watched the movie "In the Grey". It's basically "run around and pointlessly kill people" mixed random action movie tropes done badly. Action sludge.

As you are likely aware already, if stuff has glaring flaws I tend to point them out. This sludge was full of such flaws so I'...

Exit 8 - Make the game better please

Tags: movie game

In recent history one of the movies I watched was Exit 8. I waited a long time to watch this as it took a long time to arriving on English streaming.

I did not play the game before watching the movie but I knew about the game. It looked like a fun creepy concept so I was excit...

Iron Lung is a lukewarm blood bath

Tags: movie game

So apparently I write movie reviews now, so let's do another.

Iron Lung. It's a the second movie featuring Markiplier that I've seen. Well actually the first movie. The movie I was thinking of was a tv show, The Edge of Sleep. That show was weird, but I thought fairly decent. ...

The Boroughs show is stupid

Tags: tvshow

I'm on a roll with shitting on ArsTechnica articles. Here is another one.

Their review of The Boroughs

I watched the show. It was okay. That's the best I...

LLMs Believe

Tags: ai

ArsTechnica has become my latest favorite punching bag recently. They published this slop with the title "LLMs believe false statements even after ...

Malicious AI injection isn't cute

Tags: ai

Recently ArsTechnica reported on devs adding malicious injection crap into their code

Today I noticed a LinkedIn post from James Gosling. Here ...

Bill Gates big reveal

 Or... not. You've likely seen and heard that Bill Gates is a giant scumbag who was buddies with Epstein and that's why his wife divorced them. Between the lines people seem to be implying Gates is a child abuser.

Only... where's the smoking gun? Everyone keeps saying there is all t...

Say no to Microsoft Office

 The time has come to say no to Microsoft Office. If someone sends you an Office document, tell them no and demand they send an open format.

Why? Because Microsoft wasn't happy with being medium sized dicks. They decided to expand their dickishness to massive size. By effective...

Addressing AI Psychosis Constructively

Tags: ai

I spent the last post tearing down a worthless article claiming to be about AI Psychosis. ( which I'll refer to as AIP in this post ) Tearing down what someone says is relatively easy to do. It takes more effort to build a useful article that isn't worthless shit.

So I'm not g...

Misunderstanding AI Psychosis

Tags: ai

I recently stumbled upon the following TechCrunch article: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

I think this article is shit quality. And I'll explain why...

Bad Bambu. No.

 Bambu Labs is a manufactorer of 3d printers. Those printers are popular.

They offer software to assist in turning 3d models into a format that can be printed. All 3d printers need such software and such software is called a "slicer".

The bambu labs slicer? It is based on AGP...

Email is nonsensical for decades

 I've thought email is a horrible system for a very long time.

I'd like to point out some of the ways it is so and talk a little about why for some of them.

Predates widely available always online servers

Email was created before always online servers were widely a...

Reasons not to reject LLMs

Tags: ai

I just stumbled on this blog article: Why I object to and reject generative AI

To some degree I also object to LLMs, but I don't think all of the reasoning in this b...

Crypto Bros

 I've been using computers since before the graphical internet existed. 2400 baud modems with green screens? Yep I was using those. Token ring networks? Also and they were painful. So I can tell you I've seen many cycles of technology and bullshit.

As a result I have a strong b...

Firmament game is slop

Tags: game

I've played through and completed all of the Myst series by Cyan Worlds except for URU. I've also played many similar games over the years. I enjoyed many of those games greatly. I have fond memories of playing them over the years. I can remember many details within the games even no...

Your diary is evidence

 Some eons ago I remember thinking that my diary is my private information and I could rightly complain if it was made public against my will.

Well, my notion of that has now been shattered.

How? I noticed in the latest lawsuit against OpenAI that they are forcing diary entri...

Tsukuba Center Bicycle Parking

 Before I begin fair warning. I'm angry about this and I'm venting, so if cursing and venting about stuff bothers you, you should bail now.

That said, fuck Tsukuba Center and their automated bicycle parking lots.

Why do I hate them so much? Well it's complicated and I will ex...

Attention is hard for everyone

 I recently watched a YouTube video by Asa Park about MrBeast. The video is focused on being very critical of him. I'm not a fan of MrBeast and do think he is strange, but I don't particularly think he is any ultimate evil. So ...

Is the villain the enemy?

 What if the villain is not the enemy but is just the label we hoist upon anyone who does not fit the standard roles society defines as acceptable?

People are not so trivial as to fit within the notions we scope them to. While many will choose to cooperate with ...

Personal Japan travel guide

Tags: japan

In light of the potential destruction of the IT industry by AI, or at least the reduction of it to the point that competition for jobs will drop salary of it, I have been been considering alternative ways to make a living recently.

A few weeks ago I came up wit...

Love Without Hypocrisy

 I was sharing a story from when I was a teenager with a friend of mine and I thought perhaps I shall share it with all of you as well. To my memory I was 15 at the time this all happened.

I was attending a bible camp called Worldview Academy. They still exist today, and...

0player? Oh no

Tags: game

Recently I have been working on building a puzzle game. Well another one. I have actually been working on building a game called TentFires for some 5 years now. Well more to the point I have been playing TentFires and iterating on it for 4 years after I created a fully wo...

Is Japan Paradise?

Tags: japan

I recently watched a YouTube video titled I'm leaving Germany | Brutally Honest Review.

I found the detail of the video good and it made a lot of sense to me. What I found striking initially was tha...

GuliKit King Kong 3 Max

Tags: gaming

Some time ago I bought the GuliKit King Kong 3 Max controller. It looked awesome. The price is much more reasonable than Xbox Elite Series 2 controllers, and it has better tech according to the specs.

I got it; it feels awesome and I was able to use it well for a number...

Let's Reinvent the SD Card

 About a month ago some a random LinkedFluencer posted some bullshit about how her SD card failed. She was raging that she should have been notified by her computer that it was reaching end of life and that if it just exposed wear leveling through to the system she would h...

Memovich: The Plot Dissolves

Tags: ai

Two days ago Milla Jovovich posted an extensive account of her side of the MemPalace story. It was pretty absurd in my view, to put it mildly. I began writing a new blog article titled: "Memovich: The Plot Thickens".

I started writing something sharp enough to ...

Memovich Continued

Tags: ai

My last blog article was about MemPalace, the supposedly incredible AI memory project vibe coded in part by Milla Jovovich.

In the last article I focused primarily on what I view as lack of qualifications of who I believe the real author of the project was/is, ...

Milla Jovovich and the Fine Art of Selling Cognitive Swill

Tags: ai

This just in. Milla Jovovich is slapping her name on the ugly bare bottom of a crypto bro trainwreck ai disasterpiece called MemPalace.

Beneath the choking snake oil you'll find... nothing of value.

Ok ok let's get into this practically, as I can only write s...

Regarding Garry Tan, YCombinator, and Corruption

 A few weeks ago I saw an article on Hacker News new with an entire 2 upvotes that piqued my interest. It was a link to this website. It's a detailed article about how Naive ( usenaive ) is j...

Medial Axis Extraction in O(n)

 Around three months ago, I solved a long-standing problem in computational geometry and computer vision:

Extracting the true medial axis from a binary image in linear time per pixel.

No thinning.
No iterative label propagation.
No graph recon...

On AI and the Death of Humanity

Tags: ai

I've been using "AI", as it is currently referred to, for several years now. Mostly I've been using ChatGPT, although at times I've run a variety of different local models, mainly to test what is possible and ascertain for myself whether these things are "dangerous" or not. For the m...

USA: Destination Hell

 I am a US citizen. I don't, though, live in the US. I reside in Japan, and I intend to do so permanently. There are a few major reasons why:

The third poin...

Decoersion

 Something I have believed strongly for many years is that all forms of coercion are unacceptable. Recently I have been thinking about it more, and realizing how pervasive coercion is throughout society.

So, without further ado, I present to you, decoersion ( intentionally spelled w...

Social Media Decline

Social Media: From Fertile Farms to Wastelands

Social media is in rapid decline. What was once a thriving space for innovation, meaningful discussion, and genuine human connection has become a hollow shell of its former self, plagued by corporate greed, algorithmic manipulation, ...

Toddler Investors

Introduction

The investment landscape is moving at an ever-increasing pace, with investors often making funding decisions in mere minutes. The rise of trend-driven investments, such as artificial intelligence, has led to a system that prioritizes popularity over true innovation. ...

Rethinking PCs: A practical approach

Tags: tech

The current trajectory of computer hardware development has increasingly diverged from the practical needs of everyday users. Manufacturers continue to push advancements in speed, power efficiency, and display resolutions—yet for most people, these improvements offer diminishing real-world ben...

Peak Mall Theory

Tags: japan

US mall death, Japan mall life

The decline of shopping malls in the United States is a well-documented phenomenon, while in Japan, malls remain thriving, bustling centers of commerce, entertainment, and community life. This contrast raises an interesting question: why have Japane...

Email is Outdated

 Email seems ubiquitous and irreplaceable. Is it though? It was created for a useful purpose, and worked effectively for a number of years, but I would argue that it is outdated and needs to be replaced by something better as soon as possible.

I explore here why I believe email...

Identity System

 Over my career in software I've repeatedly had to deal with issues of identity. Another way to refer to identity is usernames. The most pervasive identity system in use is email, although it is quickly being supplanted by cell phone number.

Almost every user of the internet ha...

LinkedIn is Buggy

 The main social platform I use is LinkedIn. I've been using it for many years. Over my years of using it I've found it to be very buggy. I began posting the bugs I found as LinkedIn posts. That didn't seem to get much attention or have any meaningful affect, so I created a Github pro...

Hubspot Culture Code

 What follows is a critical critique of the Hubspot Culture Code. This will be an analysis focused on logic. If you are looking for a warm fuzzy perspective on company culture, this isn't it.

A compa...

Pursuing relationships is inherently puerile

Intro

I've seen a disturbing trend online where expressing interest in others for the purpose of being in a relationship with them is thought to be inherently puerile. This view is relayed more simply as "men pursuing women is always sexual and disgusting".

The t...

My time is worth $x per hour

 In the all too recent history I was feeling proud of my day job, and I thought to myself "I can made $x per hour." A bit more thinking I came to the conclusion "I shouldn't do anything that takes me an hour that I could pay someone else to do for less than $x per hour." I believed th...

Should gaming be a gradeschool subject/sport?

 I recently read a post on LinkedIn broadly proclaiming "esports will overtake basketball". My immediate reaction to this was that that is entirely rubbish, and I responded jokingly making fun of the idea. As you might expect, there was a mixed reaction to that.

Some few people...

Job Descriptions

 I am connected to quite a few recruiters and managers on LinkedIn. As a result of this, I often see posts about what candidate's resumes should look like, what information they should contain, how they should approach applying to jobs etc.

Changing the way you apply for roles ...

UMD Data Breach

 A bit over 5 years ago I was involved in the events following a serious data breach at the University of Maryland. I was pulled into the FBI / Secret Service investigation due to my involvement. It may not be clear, but I did not start the data breach. Criminal elements of unknown so...

Blog

 Welcome to my public blog. I haven't blogged publicly in quite a number of years. This is in part due to the overwhelming amount of random information available about me already, and I am unsure about adding to the pile.

I have decided that adding information of higher quality...