lol - I don’t use any AI code in projects I’m paid for at all, but I experiment in my free time. One of the few advantages is that I can keep going when I’m completely braindead, like before first coffee or when I should have gone to bed 3 hours ago. So I prompt things like “run those test thingies” when I can’t even remember the gradle/maven task that I use 50 times per week.

So yes, for me, strangely relatable :-)

For 2 years, I had to set up production environments on RHEL, mostly Apache and Keycloak servers. I had a limited, very specific list of sudo permissions, and I had to ask very specifically what I else needed, which was then granted by people who neither knew nor cared what I was working on.

SELinux permission problems were always the fallback reason when nothing else made sense. With my permissions, I could not just straight up check for it. E. g. Apache would not server a folder, cryptic error -> check file permissions -> check general Apache config problems -> assume SELinux permission is missing and request it, supplying the exact command they need to type.

Evidently, it’s not enough when many people try to block or ignore ads.

What would stop them would be a sufficiently large minority that really takes note of the ads they see and actively avoids the products. Like, even when it is the best for a given situation, buy the second best instead.

Only that would take away from the people they still do reach.

In theory, even a minority (20%?) could make ads harmful for the advertiser.

That is my exact experience. I was basically just incoherently whining about an issue I had that involved accessing the DB for old legacy windows photo albums and preserving them, and it spit out a fully working program that did all that.

Then again, it often latches onto a way to do something that messes things up and leads nowhere, and I have to be the one to say: “STOP. The goal is to install a scanner on a very common OS, one that is praised for being particularly compatible to this. Now you want me to add 50 lines of custom configuration to a background service and switch it to an unsupported version. We are clearly on the wrong path here.”

Hence I do experiment with it at home to see its limits, but my customers get 100 % human generated solutions.

The one point I don’t completely understand is the tax debt: Wouldn’t a failed business, no matter how ridiculous, be a complete write-off?

Maybe the problem is that he has to tax each fiscal year independently, so a tax debt in 2023 from successful freelance work would not be diminished by a failed “business idea” in 2024.

wow, you are right! I didn’t bother to check this whole time of needless suffering, but for what I earn with it in less than an hour I could probably buy 2x8 GB DDR-3, lol!

It just seemed a fair assumption that it would be insanely expensive …

I bought a desktop PC for a little over 2k in late 2011, and still use it. I’m a back-end developer, and certainly I would like to be able to upgrade my 16 GB RAM to 32 GB in an affordable way.

Other than that, it’s perfectly fine. IDE, a few docker containers, works.

And modern gaming is a scam anyway. Realistic graphics do not increase fun, they just eat electricity and our money. Retro gaming or not at all.

Imagine how things were if they were built to be maintained for 15+ years.

I’m retro computing, retro everything tech, and I DO need my collection!

Just had to order a keyboard DIN connector (pre PS-2) adapter for a old 80386. Because I obviously still don’t hoard enough old stuff!

One of the few things I’m afraid I won’t be able to use anymore are UMTS (3G) sticks and routers. Although, the router still works a perfectly fine mobile Wifi router, hmmmmm …

This is a crazy use of AI!

What I have been considering, but haven’t found a readily available setup yet: Make a user with lots of read permissions (most of /etc, API keys & passwords in separate excluded files). That could be done with very restrictive sudo patterns. Let the AI run commands under that user directly (it can do sudo -l to get an idea of what it can do). Then, use it like in Star Trek “Computer - run a level 2 diagnostic”.

Not as the centre of attention when fixing a problem, but as additional input / modern rubber ducking.

Thanks! The whole PC had a time (when its age was ~20 years) where it still booted, but with reset BIOS settings, followed by a time where it doesn’t boot up anymore. So I believe the most likely thing is that it leaked and caused damage. Retro computing community thinks that the most likely cause is battery damage.

Here is the exact model from someone else: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-3121-v3

Battery (top-left) already removed, but it shows that this one has leaked before as well. When you look closely, you see battery residue on the nearby 8-bit ISA (?), so it must have leaked a lot at some point and been cleaned up. Unfortunately, it came with a notorious Ni-Cd Battery; even for its time not the best.

I have an old mainboard from 1990 with emotional value and a leaked BIOS battery. And advice for cleaning that?