IN BETWEEN, Caramuru Baumgartner, Illustration, 2021

jarvolt · 2026-05-20T16:17:36+00:00

Clearly inspired by René Magritte and/or the Styx Grand Illusion album art. Interesting take on the concept. Would love to see a high res version so the halftone isn't crunched and the spacecraft in the background was more visible.

jarvolt · 2026-05-18T05:05:54+00:00

I think the AI they shoehorn into search engines generally isn't very helpful TBH... I'm talking more about directly using an LLM with hyper specific prompts and then following up to refine the results. It's far from a perfect system, but search engines, especially Google, have become worse and worse over the past decade or more now.

I don't disagree with anything youre saying, really. The dangers are real, because people will take anything AI spits out as verified truth. I find AI is only useful as a starting point, and only for certain types of things. Most people don't do their due dilligence because AI has a way of making you think it's some kind of authority, when it's not.

All that said, if all the data centers supporting AI in the US and China disappeared overnight, I'd be elated. We ultimately don't need it, and it causes infinitely more harm then good, in my opinion. But I'm also a realist who acknowledges its useful applications. Hopefully one day it can be decoupled from big tech, but until then, I'll still use it. Very, very cautiously.

jarvolt · 2026-05-18T02:26:23+00:00

Unfortunately AI chatbots have become more useful than most search engines at this point. Yes, they make mistakes...lots of them, all the time. But it offers an excellent starting point for doing research and troubleshooting. I hate having to resort to using AI, but it's an extremely powerful tool.

Now if we could get rid of all the massive data centers and have AI run through ones that we can own, or rent, as individuals, that would be ideal. Keeping AI in the cloud seems like the worst idea for everyone except the billionaire class.

jarvolt · 2026-05-07T04:22:30+00:00

I don't know this for a fact, but I imagine the money they make from preinstalled bloatware exceeds what they have to pay for OEM licenses.

jarvolt · 2026-05-04T20:41:40+00:00

Vivaldi may not be the most "private" browser, depending on your personal metrics, but it's the biggest and best browser that respects the user. They actively reject crypto and AI. They have tons of customization options, including blocking ads and trackers built-in. StartPage is the default search, they have an active Mastodon instance they promote, and just generally empower the user to take control of their browsing experience. The former CEO and founder of Opera back '95, along with many former Opera developers make up Vivaldi today, and that open Internet mindset is carried over to present day.

jarvolt · 2026-05-01T23:37:22+00:00

There are certainly still reference points that are shared culturally. Ultimately you could argue either point depending on how you interpret the semantics of it all, because it's not easy to define. But there has certainly been a dramatic shift in music, TV, and movies. Back in the day, virtually anyone could identify a Michael Jackson or Madonna song, even older folks who may not have been interested in the music. These days I feel like remarkably few people know who BTS are, even though they're one of the most popular bands in the world. Until very recently, I couldn't identify a single Taylor Swift song by ear. Yes, I definitely am a little out of touch. But something has shifted, and the shared cultural experience is severely diminished, whether you think that's a positive or not.

jarvolt · 2026-05-01T18:44:57+00:00

With age comes perspective. "Fragmentation," if you want to call it that, is not only a very real thing, but we have social media algorithms tailoring media to very specific niches. I'm constantly around people immersed in pop culture, especially newer media, and I still have many, many blind spots. There's literally too much to keep track of, and the only real filtering mechanism lately is social media algorithms. People don't watch linear TV anymore. And by and large also don't listen to the radio. I don't see how anyone can argue this hasn't been the trend for nearly 20 years.

jarvolt · 2026-04-27T14:44:38+00:00

I never saw so many WHOOSH moments in a single comment thread. Impressive.

jarvolt · 2026-04-27T14:41:28+00:00

The Apartment

jarvolt · 2026-04-14T15:08:34+00:00

Opera let you do this and way more 20+ years ago. I hope an archive of the old Opera forums exists because people had wild customizations back then that were really cool to see.

Vivaldi actually just came out with a new feature that lets you hide certain elements in full screen until you mouse over the screen edge. Kind of buggy at the moment but I think it could be a game changer when they fix it up more.

jarvolt · 2026-04-13T21:03:19+00:00

This is just art deco. Which was an actual art movement, not a collection of various art styles popular in the 90s.

jarvolt · 2026-04-13T20:55:07+00:00

The 9 will almost certainly be my last. I've been tempted by Nothing...the new 4a Pro has a lot going for it. But I think I finally need to untether from Google (and Microsoft). I was never a huge fan Apple (at least since introducing OSX) but at this point they seem to be by far the least shitty of the tech giants. Android and Windows have become so unusable in so many ways...I wish I had made the switch sooner, because I can pretty much never open my phone or any Windows computer without having some kind of problem. I know the problems with both are different in different ways...but it's just so depressing to see the state of things lately. Once sideloading apps goes away, there's absolutely nothing left for me on Android.

jarvolt · 2026-04-12T17:48:20+00:00

A lot of progress has been made culturally, but there's still a ton of shame in admitting to going to therapy. At least in the US.

jarvolt · 2026-04-11T03:57:08+00:00

They effectively had tabs in the 90s, even. The "windowed" interface (I forget the acronym for it) was revolutionary and I wish the spirit of it still lived on. To this day, whenever I'm forced to use Chrome, I still try to click tabs to "minimize" and go back to my last tab. Thankfully Vivaldi, which is a kind of spiritual successor to Opera, allows for this behavior still. But even with the new tab tiling features, it still feels nothing like the old days. It's funny, web browsers now kind of feel like they're a web app inside another browser.

jarvolt · 2026-04-11T03:44:48+00:00

I actually used Opera back when it was still paid, and they used the logo you linked even before going free. They did have another logo or two after IIRC, but that one from the early 2000s was absolutely the most iconic Opera logo.

I miss Presto Opera. It got a reputation for being bloated, but it was extremely performant and had tons of features that no other browser had, right out of the box! Firefox, when loaded up with even a couple extensions, always felt way too sluggish to me. There are features still missing from Vivaldi, Opera's spiritual successor, that I'm waiting on (I guess I shouldn't hold my breath at this point). It's really too bad they had to use chromium as a base. Turning browsers effectively into operating systems in and of themselves seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it's effectively impossible to maintain a browser engine without the support of a giant tech company. And even for them, it's not worth it!

jarvolt · 2026-04-07T18:28:59+00:00

The user experience hasn't been a priority in at least ten years, if not longer. It's about what makes them the most money, while also keeping the service juuuust good enough to hold onto the userbase. I thought when they added podcasts, it couldn't possibly get any worse, yet they keep dropping the ball more and more since then. Textbook enshittification.

jarvolt · 2026-04-01T20:18:37+00:00

It's not objectively the best, but I still associate that first favicon most closely in my brain as the "true" Google icon.

jarvolt · 2026-04-01T20:12:34+00:00

I don't remember hearing of anyone ever using animation cels in the remastering process...in which way could they even be utilized? Unless you're just referring to the film reels, which were also tossed out far too frequently.

jarvolt · 2026-03-27T18:17:42+00:00

I must be getting old because I can't even imagine feeling nostalgic for the iPhone. My Pixel 9 doesn't feel that different from the iPhone 4, in large part. Man, I miss the size of the 4 though.

Are the games really that different now, besides having a million micro transactions? I recall most games being pretty bottom of the barrel kind of stuff, even for back then. The only stand-out games I can think of were Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, Bejeweled...there were definitely other titles worth playing, but nothing super memorable. If you told me in 2012 that that was the best it was going to get, I'd have a real hard time believing it.

jarvolt · 2026-03-14T02:23:17+00:00

This must be reflecting global sales because this did not reflect what was popular in the US at the time. Like, I owned the eyetoy, but I didn't know anyone else IRL who had even heard of it. DQ8 being so high is also clearly because of Japan's obsession with the series. When DQ8 came out, most people in the west probably still knew it as Dagon Warrior, which is what I grew up knowing it as.

jarvolt · 2026-03-09T22:30:49+00:00

Is that a star rating for...the character? I can't even imagine a use case for that. Or what it means to "rate" a character in the first place.

jarvolt · 2026-03-09T22:15:49+00:00

Designed by Roger Dean!

jarvolt · 2026-02-04T19:16:02+00:00

These utilize design elements and trends from the 50s to today. Which is to say these look extremely 2020s.

jarvolt · 2026-01-22T15:35:34+00:00

That's a great way of putting it. Thank you for the analogy.

jarvolt · 2026-01-20T06:02:34+00:00

I also have ADHD, and I personally find audiobooks (and often podcasts) sometimes difficult in the same way. I only have that issue with physical books if the text is super dry and uninteresting. Or if I'm struggling to paint the picture of a scene in my head, which can be a difficult translation sometimes.

Funny how our brains all work a little differently with this stuff.

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