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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 25th, 2023

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  • What I meant to say is that a lot of commercial keyboards are sold with some “customizable” they are. And it’s partly true, you have tool allowing to make some shortcut on popular OSes. It might be sufficient for some people … but it is NOT the same as putting your own firmware in it.

    I’m not advocating for a $300 keyboard over a $30 one, “just” for genuine customization. Some that doesn’t have arbitrary limitations from the manufacturer and doesn’t have support for only some OSes which in turns (well Windows and MacOS not to name them) also promote a consumer only with limited control options, as OP is saying about enshitification.



  • Buy open hardware with open source firmware.

    I’m typing this from a Corne-ish Zen and you can see my firmware (ZMK) with my keymap at https://github.com/Utopiah/zmk-config-zen-2/blob/main/config/corneish_zen.keymap#L27

    Nobody can touch this but me. No update can break it. Yet, it’s more feature rich than most keyboards.

    There are equivalents for most peripherals. It’s not cheap, usually even MORE expensive than already pricey ones like Logitech (I have an MX Vertical, still) but IMHO it’s worth it. It’s good right now, pragmatically speaking, but also morally speaking.

    I advise against swimming upstream, namely NOT buying hardware that have such enshitification practices because if they don’t do it today, they might tomorrow when there is more pressure from shareholders. Also by buying alternatives you are economically supporting people whom you believe are providing better solutions for yourself and others.

    PS: a gateway to such projects is https://crowdsupply.com which is a kind of KickStarter. I bought a dozen things there, all delivered and working.




  • FWIW I did try a lot (LLMs, code, generative AI for images, 3D models) in a lot of ways (CLI, Web based, chat bot) both locally and using APIs.

    I don’t use any on a daily basis. I find it exciting that we can theoretically do a lot “more” automatically but… so far the results have not been worth the efforts. Sadly some of the best use cases are exactly what you highlighted, i.e low effort engagement for spam. Overall I find that either working with a professional (script writer, 3D modeler, dev, designer, etc) is a lot more rewarding but also more efficient which itself makes it cheaper.

    For use cases where customization helps while quality does matter much due to scale, i.e spam, then LLMs and related tools are amazing.

    PS: I’d love to hear the opinion of a spammer actually, maybe they also think it’s not that efficient either.




  • I agree but I don’t watch TV so I don’t bother. Yet… I still hate product placement so I might be interested in such a solution. Anyway here is how I would do it :

    • evaluate what exists, e.g SponsorBlock, and see what’s the closest that fit my need, try it, ask in forum or repository issues if modifications are possible
    • gather videos of the typically problematic content, say few hours to start
    • annotate them by adding the time stamps then the location on the image
    • replace problematic content with gradually complex solutions, e.g black, average color of the area, denoising (quite compute intensive)
    • honestly evaluate the result
    • consider the biggest problem, e.g here on first pass fixed content so a detector based on machine learning for the type of content could help
    • iterate, sharing my result back with the closest interested community

    Honestly it’s a worthwhile endeavor but be mindful it’s an arm race. There are a LOT of smart people paid to add ads everywhere… but there are even more people, like you and I, eager to remove them. IMHO the key trick is, like SponsorBlock, to federate the efforts.


  • Can’t help but wonder what has been the impact of the support, e.g through subsidies, for automaker industry both nationally and internationally.

    We keep on hearing that it’s a huge industry, that it “creates” lots of jobs, that people buy cars from their own country as a form or pride, etc. I bet some of it is true but I also bet the negative impact is not communicated as clearly. Any research on the topic? I imagine it might highlight precisely how the EV transition (which in itself is also problematic due to car usage, battery recycling, etc) has been radically slow down, maybe also public transport usage, CO2 emission, etc. Anyway I’d love to read a paper on the topic.