@retoor My brain is spaghetti and all I can think of is what would happen if I sent you a logic bomb via fax but you somehow received it on a teletype machine.

C was conceived between 1972 and 1973.

The original K&R book was published in 1978.

"90s relic"

Tell me you're a schmuck, without telling me you're a fucking schmuck.

@cuddlyogre downloading more bitagyges right now.

lmao, I barely even need 2 gigs. GNU master race!

Doesn't OpenMW use some form of XML-looking markup for generating UI elements? Shoot, doesn't every other GUI program do this too?

One time, I said I'll just do everything with straight up C and OpenGL. Don't remember how that went. I got sidetracked and stopped working on it.

The grandest revelation yet!

Fuck off to whatever hole you crawled out of, and stay there this time.

kiki is cyborg assassin confirmed?

It's actually a bit more nuanced than one might assume: the memory of emergent, "disruptive" technology making entire business redundant is still relatively fresh -- it's been happening quite frequently in the last, say, two hundred years or so.

Why those folks went absolutely bankrupt should be seen on a case-by-case basis, but the overarching theme is some novel invention ruins everything. From that, integrating every shiny new thing became the default strategy for survival.

The problematic part is as you have outlined: people will blindly try to adopt technology without understanding it, or even knowing if it can actually do anything for them, in a somewhat FOMO-related way.

In general, "what if we disregard this new thing and get driven out of business because of it?" seems to be the thought process. It's based on fear and ignorance to begin with.

Thus, I propose we abolish all this silly corporate idiocracy and go back to living from the land as our ancestors did.

@retoor No, I have the pet already! Her name is Sawda. She is my mage familiar now.

@lorentz Sir, I owe you and @Demolishun my dog. Thank you ^^

Anyway, rolling is sweet for writing. Sometimes, if I have complete control, nothing exciting or unpredictable happens, or it might be a little bit self-indulgent. But giving away this control also means something I didn't intend to occur __can__ occur, if I play by the rules. Like, say, evaporating the protagonist's plot armor. Ooops.

One can break the rules, obviously, or have a contingency ex machina, but it's best done sparingly, while still maintaining that failure has consequence, and narrative weight. It's a lot harder to structure a larger story this way, though. I'm not very good at it ;> I like to just wander off into things and see what happens, so it's all very random.

@djsumdog maybe he's on tty and Lynx doesn't render the search results properly. You know, switching to your sidearm being faster and all.

@netikras I've been here since forever, I just have this weird tendency to delete my account a while after I hit 1K, then come back a few years later.

** OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND **

@atheist Oh, my bad, you can't go below it as that's impossible. You're right.

Point still stands.

@kobenz I don't think they know that qubits require temperatures of around or outright below absolute zero to maintain their state.

BREAKING: amidst rescheduling of the much anticipated devRant bowl, rising YouTube star SidTheITGuy confesses to premeditated manslaughter.

We reached out to shovethisupmine, for clarification on the many rumors that he is fearful for his life, but he refused to comment and assured us he is "def not chickening out".

@Demolishun I'm not complaining, and in fact I'm grateful, but you didn't have to do that lmao

@SidTheITGuy I do think arranging a boxing match to try and fuck up an interwebz enemy is a bit much. The point of it seems to be literally beating the opponent over something dumb to prove your worth; a dick-measuring trial by combat, if you will.

However, I also think it's hilarious that people would actually do it. As in, thinking that it'd make them look good rather than moronic. Bonus points if the challenger is the one to drop like a sack of potatoes.

@retoor I salute you, O honorable guardian 🫡

@retoor Holy fuck, you kamikazed the bitch into oblivion. He's just... gone. POOF. Dafuq? What kind of black magic sacrifice is this? Do not tell me. Absolute beauty.

lmao, that's a sound proposition.

But difference between US presidential candidates lies entirely within the realm of internal -- rather than foreign -- policies, so likely it wouldn't change much. Obama dropped bombs like b2plane drops fat stinking dumps, so progressive they gave him the nobel peace prize.

@Demolishun We make it an event. Build hype. Interview them, have them trash-talk each other. Maybe sell some T-Shirts. Then we peer-pressure Sid into streaming the fight on his channel.

Think about it. It's a win-win.

@retoor This is war; time to do away with the reputation system, put a blacklist in place, and begin mass-production of accounts. How many soldiers can ragnar command on it's own? We'll need multiple battalions.

@Demolishun I henceforth volunteer to rule with an iron fist over such a dictatorial project, and solemnly swear that I will absolutely abuse power to further my own selfish goals.

@retoor Imagine for a second that we're back in 1997; an IBM rack manages to defeat a world champion at chess, so we start making wild predictions about the future. Of those, what does in the end come to pass?

For every other such breakthrough moment, the accompanying expectations are almost always unmanaged. What started the current cycle of AI was, very much, the idea that it'd just keep improving at an exponential pace.

We now know this to be entirely fantastical; all that has truly increased at an alarming rate, as a result of upscaling, is the cost of development and maintenance. At this point, the law of diminishing returns is in full swing.

This doesn't necessarily mean other breakthroughs won't happen. But for what we can know with certainty at the present, most of what was and continues to be peddled belongs in the realm of science fiction. A cyborg snake-oil bubble, if you will.

TL;DR promise yet unfulfilled.

Obscenely expensive parlor trick is precisely the right description; when cost-to-usefulness ratio tips overwhelmingly into absolute wastefulness, it's time to pull the fucking plug.

Also they're cute, makes it so their scientifically proven acts of straight-up mind control through parasites seem like less of an affront.

And then you die and there's nothing. Feel nihilistic yet?

Just kidding; الله أكبر.

@retoor My position on Walrus is that having a specific operator for "assign and return the assigned value" is utter nonsense.

In "(X=*F) == Y", the result of the assignment is being checked for equality. It is obvious. Walrus is never obvious. For one, because it does something different in every language. If we don't agree on what the operator means, first and foremost, then it's a bad idea to begin with.

Second, the reason multiple operators for assignment would even be desirable is making it explicit whether data is being copied rather than transfered. That is a real problem with every OOP reference dungfest, which Python is and so shares in this and every other design flaw. You get Walrus, but this, never properly addressed.

Third, Walrus van Rossum, word ptr [$ECDE ror 16]; purposefully nonsensical yet absolutely meaningful in it's own way.

What was I talking about again?

lmao, I like coding like it's 1970. This modern bullshit needs to be erradicated, without mercy, shoved back up the very depths of that vast, ominous somber asshole that spawned it. Uncle Bob.

Also Walruses.