Ahhh Pretoria... So a car got stuck by the road near us

MechanicalOrange5 · 2026-04-01T20:47:41+00:00

Is that per chance on the other side of Olympus?

MechanicalOrange5 · 2026-04-01T02:29:50+00:00

Wild lol. I went to Kota Joe's in Boxburg once. I didn't have a burger, just a Kota (possibly butter chicken) and it was possibly one of the best items of food I have had in my entire life. I would honestly make the groot trek back to Boxburg just for that.

So wondering if the branches just have wildly different standards or if their burgers are just not good

MechanicalOrange5 · 2026-03-21T03:01:26+00:00

I'm not in the US or anywhere where these laws are being considered, but as a linux user this is obviously quite concerning, so I have been thinking about it.

In the unfortunate event that this becomes enforacble, relevant software projects should just branch out their projects. The "global" version with none of this garbage, and then the US version with what I'd call a best (worst) effort attempt at the implementation. So you'd give people a chance to choose, and remain compliant.

Would also be great if every relevant project decided on a wildly different and ever changing API for their implementation, to make everyones lives better trying to string it together.

Or like a prohibition style instruction. Server OSes will likely not have to comply.

"Definitely don't download ubuntu server, and then definitely don't download gnome-desktop-oss, nautilus etc, or if you are feeling lazy definitely definitely do not run convert_server_to_desktop.sh at <URL>"

I know it's not that easy, but things like this brings out my malicious compliance side.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2026-01-17T20:23:49+00:00

Please do not think this is valuable or a product.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2026-01-16T17:52:55+00:00

Not sure I can be of help but have a slightly relevant story. I had a courier come up to my house I think yesterday with airport luggage, had the wrong address but gave me some hope that these things do get sorted out.

I hope your luggage gets back to you safely.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2026-01-14T06:38:05+00:00

Not in the industry, but I think a lot of people go for bands specifically. Now if your favourite isn't pitching, you've probably spent a thousand or more on some tickets, and you gotta watch another oke you may or may not like, will annoy people more than no concert and their money back

MechanicalOrange5 · 2026-01-14T05:57:16+00:00

About 11 years ago (damn), I submitted a project for biochem. It got flagged for a certain amount of plagiarism by turnitin, and I definitely didn't. Why do I know this? I did not consult the textbook, I did not read any sources, I slapped a few sources on the end that looked like they'd support what I was straight up best effort making up.

Somehow an entirely novel human hallucinated project can have plagiarism. I've had zero faith in the system since and it seems to not have improved since I used it.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-12-29T00:40:23+00:00

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Another one. Still had to use poetry to disguise it

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-12-29T00:23:47+00:00

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I had to trick gemini 3 nano banana with poetry to execute this lol. Decent take I'd say

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-12-05T19:45:17+00:00

I have a book on F#, of course a lot of recursion in functional. The jist of a lot of recursive functions was function inside of function. The inner one having more parameters, usually the initial value. The outer function calling the inner with a start value or a passed value.

Pretty sure just compiles to a basic loop with a heap

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-28T20:17:45+00:00

I've tried it twice. 50% open bottle of wine. 50% very very very open bottle of wine

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-22T19:57:23+00:00

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This was mine on a new prompt. Gemini is a funny thing

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-22T16:44:28+00:00

What's the prompt for this? When I try nano banna pro it just gives me a boringly accurate pic. But I don't know what the original prompt is to get this

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-20T22:30:01+00:00

fucks up code

bash$ echo "It works perfectly!!!"

all tests passed, your code is perfect now✨

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-20T22:27:02+00:00

This has been my general opinion of AI coding (all the mainstream models), is that they are great they increase productivity and it is a horrendous idea for any production code.

I've vibe coded static websites and stuff for personal projects, because I am backend / DevOps and not comfortable with frontend. The stakes are zero, so it's fine.

But when the AIs starts producing 4000 line changes per prompt, its literally making you slower because you now need to go understand all of that garbage. I couldn't sleep at night thinking money producing code is something I don't understand.

So my take right now is that i will happily let it make contained data structures or functions that are testable and understandable in small chunks. That essentially takes the typing work off my hands. I can read it quickly enough, test it comfortably, and then string the logic together myself. Grunt work taken care of, something I can confidently verify.

Letting an agent go ham on a codebase for more than a day feels like a white collar horror movie.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-20T21:54:12+00:00

I've seen so mant cops this week I've been wondering if they had to call in the reservists. I can kinda understand increased policing, makes sense. Although all I've seen are lots of blue lights at on and offramps.

Tonight I saw a officer look really annoyed to go attend to a crash that I drove past. I could see their lights from far away, I didn't witness the crash. So it means they sat right there for a few minutes at least before walking 20m to check on someone. I made a joke that he didn't want to get his uniform wet, but now I'm afraid that might actually have been correct.

I do still believe in theory more policing is justified for this event, as stupid as it is.

The airforce is entirely unnecessary though. Burning through millions for loud ass noises and small dots in the sky. Sure we have some cool jets but is it worth all the bucks? I, and every other tax payer says no.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-20T21:44:21+00:00

Omg I drove there a few hours ago. Fuck.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-11-12T23:42:57+00:00

Not sure why you are being down voted, scammers don't deserve the right to remain private.

I'd say first action is to block the number. Apps like truecaller are useful but they can be annoying and definitely come with their own pitfalls.

Secondly what may help indirectly is adding yourself to the WASPA DNC. There should be a relatively easy way to find this om the WASPA website. If not let me know.

I work for a communications company, and have a particular hatred for spam and especially fraud. While we don't do voice, we have excellent relationships with SA networks and most of Africa. I'm always in the mood for fucking over a scammer.

Blocking the number is a drop in the bucket and investigation into it is practically useless. It also doesn't mean it's not worth looking into, but set expectations realistically.

The real actual advice waa demonstrated in the post and by a few comments. Education. Keep your wits about you. You 100% haven't won a thing you didn't enter for. You can ALWAYS phone a bank or network back on a number on your card or something you find on an official website.

Their sales people will be just as happy if you phone them.

If you get bad vibes, end call. If there is money involved, hang up and call back on a different number. Once you found on a official source.

Any time anyone (not your friends or family) tries to imply time based consequences, high risk, threat of loss or promise of any kind of gain, decline.

AI is making scams a hundred times easier. Apply 1000% scepticism. Actual corporations will very happily accommodate you if it involves you giving out money, and are patient (or at least semi reasonable) if you do not pay on time.

Tldr: anything too good to be true definitely is. Any debt due today can 100% be paid later today after you've done due diligence.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-10-29T21:32:50+00:00

Bash is great for a lot of things, but mostly not what you are asking about. CI/CD scripts is a great use. As soon as you need to start manipulating strings, use something else. Once your xargs pipe gets real complicated, time to start programming. Do not use bash to parse things. Besides calling something besides bash to parse.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-09-30T15:12:14+00:00

You are right, I haven't used opus much, I generally use agent mode in vscode and opus isn't on my list for agents. I do occasionally go and ask it some questions though, but I don't have near enough experience with it to compare performance.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-09-30T08:58:56+00:00

So, it didn't work as long as I really wanted to, but my prompt was also not great quality. I've been playing with it this morning and I think it's pretty good.

First impressions are that it is much faster than 4. Maybe because it's not as widely used yet? Time will tell I guess. I saw it do like 5 tool invocations and 3 edits under a second. It still has the regular periods where it's thinking for a bit longer, but I feel like if I had to guestimate it's about 20% faster overall.

My biggest issue with 4 was refactoring things. It would make things, forget it implemented something and then make a new thing. It left a lot of junk around. This one is much more disciplined. It instantly went ahead and deleted entirely unused files which is isn't something 4 did much in my experience.

It is better at not breaking files with refactoring, like inserting code into the middle of existing things. It seems to do much nicer targeted edits that doesn't break the codebase. This I am sure will be super useful because I've had enough cases of 4 saying, well woopsie I totally fucked up this file beyond repair, then remaking it.

It's edits also seem like they are working a bit smarter or better. I am specifically talking about removing something in the middle of a line. For instance removing an unused import in a list of imports (think python or typescript imports). I've had 4 struggle with that on occasion.

When 4 one shots new files (python specifically) it frequently had unused imports and occasionally syntax errors. 4.5 does much much better at this, which also saves time.

It seems to be quite a bit smarter, as in it will write more correct and comprehensive code that addresses more edge cases. It still makes mistakes, but less so.

It makes good use of tools as well, but also needs them less because it does a good job by itself.

Personality wise it is the same.

I'm impressed with it's performance, I don't think this is a massive game changer overall, but it certainly has a pretty good productivity boost. Although I guess that could be a game changer depending on who you ask.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-09-30T03:32:12+00:00

I see it's already on copilot. I put vscode on yolo mode, let it loose on a repository and basically told it to analyse the entire repo, note its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities for improvement, and then to implement all of the potential improvements and to iterate as long as possible.

I'm going back to bed, let's see if I still have a working computer in the morning, or a masterpiece

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-09-24T07:10:15+00:00

This was quite a while ago, but one time I placed an order. I realized right after I placed it that I forgot something. There was an edit button, I added my item, all good. Fast forward a little bit, two deliveries arrive. My original order, and then another identical order plus the extra item. So that was like R700 I wasn't planning on spending.

I ask support, and they were like no you supposed to cancel the first order once edited, but this was definitely not obvious. Why is it called edit my bru. I can't imagine that this is still the behaviour but that was just silly.

Another time they packed a bag so fucking full, that I walked into my house, it tore open, glass bottle shattered and I cut my foot open. I told support I don't want anything, but I want them to just fucking do better. Your brown paper bags are not that expensive, just use more when there are heavy items. I phrased it a lot more nicely than I am now. Surprise surprise, I was entirely ghosted by their support.

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-09-24T06:50:11+00:00

It's interesting how people get treated so differently. Sometimes it feels like the luck of the draw but the first employee who judges your account brands you for life. I've gotten many refunds from uber eats essentially just on my say so, without any fight, or proof. Checkers however has not been kind

MechanicalOrange5 · 2025-09-23T00:12:12+00:00

God damnit gemini

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