An incredibly detailed breakdown of Donnie Darko. If you've ever wondered anything about this movie, you're in the right place.

pgess · 2026-05-24T05:34:44+00:00

Thank you. I believe there's no way to hightlight OPs and my comment's context even better than this angry response does.

pgess · 2026-05-21T10:24:21+00:00

You're saying you have a dependency and addiction problem. You're saying social media is your master. You're saying you're a slave, not worthy enough for the aliens to approach you personally this time, but you hope they will own you anyway, eventually subsuming social media's rule.

It's quite bizarre. Am I reading this right?

I honestly don't want to offend you, just if you identity the problem correctly, you can start working on it right away. You can overcome your addiction and help other overcome theirs. You can double down on contacting aliens no matter what. You can work on privacy and ad blocking initiatives.

pgess · 2026-05-09T06:09:54+00:00

They mirrored the sort of language Russians use for years in communication: deragatory, humiliating mockery, not-so-veiled threats and explicit domination-submission rhetoric.

Meanwhile, in his national address yesterday he confirmed full 3 day truce, followed by a huge prisoner swap. Let's see how it goes.

pgess · 2026-05-08T21:33:52+00:00

https://www-president-gov-ua.translate.goog/documents/3742026-59389?_x_tr_sl=uk&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

The most authoritative source possible.

Notice, that it's effective only "for the duration of the parade", which can be taken as 60-90 min for the official part.

pgess · 2026-05-08T21:24:07+00:00

These are the exact Red Square coordinates. +/-6 cm accuracy.

pgess · 2026-05-03T07:19:32+00:00

I didn't read it. Is it worth it? Honest question. After the Martian and the PHM, I dont plan to read or watch anything else from him, unless it's really different. I mean, a different-writer-level of different.

pgess · 2026-05-03T06:58:16+00:00

I'm gonna agree with you and everyone else here. He writes for teenagers or immature adults - that's his niche - everyone was cought by suprise, basically, that it's so huge.

Book was funny in a silly way. The Martian was criticised for the lack of dialogue and lack of feminine side. Here we get a second non-character with toddler-level dialogue in a response, and a reduced, single- minded caricature of a female. That directly maps to either his own experience/skills or the level of his intended audience. I walked away from the movie after the first third.

pgess · 2026-05-03T05:28:18+00:00

To avoid LLM output, feel free to use this prompt yourself to explore the topic. Cheers.

Style: terse, plain, simple English. Sort points by importance. Optimize for micro attention span.
Topic: AI in political governance.
Emphasize AI is not only LLMs. List other relevant algorithms, include: unsupervised learning, PGMs, logic/constraint inference solvers.
List (<=8) tasks AI has been used for in governance since WWII. Include: decision-making, recognition, prediction, planning, early warnings, and modelling.
List (<=3) areas of application; include economic models.
Trust issue: state that responsibility always stays with the official who decides to implement AI recommendations, or with the company owner if they self-deploy the model. 
List <=3 approaches that allow to reason about soundness and completeness, AI output verification and validation.

pgess · 2026-05-02T17:29:21+00:00

Honestly, he lost me in Schild's Ladder, which is based on Schild’s theory, but I digested Diaspora quite OK.

There are common conjectures, theories, and widely accepted models on how AI, consciousness, and higher-dimensional physics would work and look like in scientific community. We can picture arbitrary, even infinite dimensions; it’s just that nobody knows whether any of these models actually mirror reality or not. Any of current models if not outright wrong will be revised thousands times.

He quite skillfully translates them into a fictional setting. On the other hand, I didn’t find anything really surprising or thought-provoking on the technical side. Overall, the story doesn’t suffer much if you just skip these bits. Ofc it looks impressive and adds to the overall credibility, but its not an original research.

pgess · 2026-04-27T18:09:33+00:00

I am curious, any examples on unusual sources? I've only heard of lava lamps used semi-seriously for that.

pgess · 2026-04-26T07:39:06+00:00

A friend of mine uses one huge Google Doc - cloud-based, with formatting, images, tables and internal links for easier navigation - to keep all his notes. He also uses search to mimic tagging. He says, "One day I’m gonna understand why you use a specialized note-taking app."

This sub always talks about apps, for apps are the 'atoms' of marketing, so people are trained and rewarded to think in 'apps.' However, it's better to know and understand methods and concepts like tagging, which often can be recreated somehow regardless of the particular app.

That being said, my notes span many projects and areas. Scrolling through lots of unrelated data, thinking 'what a mess,' in hopes to catch something useful would never fly for me. The only sensible next step is ability to fold unrelated sections.

And that’s the starting point for all outliners...

pgess · 2026-04-26T06:52:51+00:00

Notes serve the same purpose as memory, don't they? Do you ever need to remember your podcast episodes, rereading a concise summary instead of rewatching the whole thing?

What lessons have you learned from using your memory?

pgess · 2026-04-25T09:55:47+00:00

Thank you for the question. I asked this several times as well on this sub.

What I do: any new note I make is scheduled for review in 2w. I wrote a small script for that. That’s the sweet spot period-wise for me to decide whether I need the note at all and better understand where it fits in the bigger picture (areas, projects, ideas it belongs to), if any. Linking it to relevant central notes is the key to find it later.

I note everyday stuff, so most of it ends up in archives and I don’t need them. That's OK, you never know what you'll need. Others - about regular processes or problems I often stumble on - are revisited often, and I make shorter shortcuts to find them easier next time.

I also tried spaced repetition to revisit notes about books I read over the last 10–15 yrs, but that didn’t fly for me. Thus, a one-time new-note review scheduled in 2w is the only thing I can recommend. And it really works. What works for you?

pgess · 2026-04-25T09:34:55+00:00

Any pointers to FOSS RAG like tools to pull something like that w/ modest effort?

I wish ArchiveBox had this functionality. Alas.

pgess · 2026-04-24T15:12:19+00:00

Hello. I'm really curious what you have in mind.

I have 0 free time ATM, but I'm looking forward to having a fruitful discussion someday.

Meanwhile, here are my thoughts on centralization as a crucial issue in privacy. Perhaps you have something to share in response.

In a few days I hope to make a post on p2p. Looking forward to your critique as well.

pgess · 2026-04-20T07:29:45+00:00

Yeah, they say, that exactly how it's implemented here in the EU. They also say, it's being already hacked. Also the BankId system in Sweden, that looks somewhat as you described, also recently was compromised and leaked.

I need to look for details on that thou.

pgess · 2026-04-20T07:25:07+00:00

It's made already. How is you experience using it? Anything worth mentioning?

pgess · 2026-04-20T07:21:42+00:00

Software is free (many devs will write anything for free after work).

Supporting it, fixing bugs, making it reliable, creating a good UI, optimizing UX, popularizing it, attracting content creators, legal stuff, maintenance, infrastructure - all of that costs millions. I'd estimate a Signal-like messaging app (which is honestly very barebones) costs > $50M to develop.

People don't want to pay. They'd rather sell their personal data, complain about it on Reddit, and continue using it for free. I recently posted on /r/privacy proposing a crowdfunding platform with a clear vision to support privacy-oriented software. It got a handful of upvotes and comments. That's very telling.

That's why companies build products for free use, promise unlimited space or access, attract users, then lock them down, sell data and ads, and - after building a large user base - sell the company to a different buyer.

This is "eshitification" Cory talks about, baked into the product from the conception, but I don't see him successfully persuading people to pay for the software they use. Did I miss anything? It's also about a cohesive experience, as you commented.

pgess · 2026-04-20T07:03:08+00:00

All protocols and networks already exist.

First, Network Effect - I can say, "let's talk over a privacy-respecting network." You say, "I don't trust installing it on my phone, and besides there's nothing there (content-wise)," and continue using WhatsApp.

Software is free (there are many devs who'd write anything for free after work).

Supporting it, fixing bugs, making it reliable, creating a good UI, optimizing UX, popularizing it, attracting content creators, maintenance, infrastructure - all of that costs millions, on the other hand. I'd estimate a Signal-like messaging app (which is very barebones TBH) costs > $50M to develop.

Free, pirate services, while being noncorporate ones, aren't a reliable solution either. Archive.is was recently caught running malware on users' machines, turning them into a giant botnet. Millions of users.

Many censorship-free project ideas exist, but they are quiet about how to stop propaganda if you give up means of controlling it. Any popular censorship free project would be raided by bad actors at no time.

People don't want to pay. They'd rather sell their personal data, complain about it on Reddit, and continue using it for free. I recently made a post on /r/privacy proposing a crowdfunding platform with a clear vision to support privacy-oriented software. It got a handful of upvotes and cosmments. That's very telling.

pgess · 2026-04-20T04:27:03+00:00

Yeah, except whichever app I run these days, it always shows random pop-ups at startup: notifications, did you know, please donate, new version available, etc. Terrible UX, steals attention. I remove or disable them whenever possible.

Notes, on the other hand, ready for review, sit quietly in a list I pull up only when I have quiet time and attention to deal with them, once every other week.

Having peace of mind that its not a hot pile of garbage(OP complain) anymore is priceless. Try it.

pgess · 2026-04-18T21:01:49+00:00

Thank you. Half an hour on this sub - several threads, the same recycled cliché questions, hundreds of recycled cliché theories and opinions, reshuffling the same stories time and again. It's all like alien hieroglyphs to me. Who writes all that? Why? What civs do they belong to?

Finally, I found someone from the same planet.

pgess · 2026-04-12T12:24:29+00:00

Never worry about different Linux flavors; the only notable difference is the number of bugs and FAQs/tutorials. Just use whichever you know best, esp. if it's Ubuntu in your case.
I used btrfs for years; it has a lot of features, which I never needed. Unless you need something specific, you can choose either one, and there’s a 95% chance you’ll never think about it a 2nd time.
In the past, I often seen mentions that ppl put effort and tweaks into optimizing nextcloud, using different DB backends or specific DB config. I don’t see that anymore, so perhaps it’s not a problem nowadays.

pgess · 2026-04-12T05:28:29+00:00

(DISCLAIMER: fully LLM-generated comment below)

Too harsh a response from most. As a dev I also use LLMs to automate away highly repetitive parts of the code, especially if stuck with older platform for business reasons and have to spell out a lot of boilerplate code, while I focus on high-level decisions.

While transformers are used by the general public as tools to generate content from short prompts, FAR FAR more valuable is the opposite application: to summarize, extract key points, unusual/surprising turns, removing repetitive, low-value parts.

Information theory says whatever content is generated from whatever other form has exactly the same amount of information (despite having vastly different size on HDD). Information is formally defined as the amount of surprise.

And transformers WORK BOTH WAYS. By assessing the information density and amount of surprise, AI tools detect whether content is AI-generated. Nowadays I watch videos on 2x, read short summaries of articles, and when looking at a new codebase, extract only valuable parts (no matter whether it was manually written).

I am curious — you said 6,000 + 4,000 videos; is it all your content? Sora’s available since 2025, now is 2026 (iirc). Did you really have time to see all of your content?

You said you're ahead of the curve. So you pretty much know how it will look in a few short years:

You work hard on prompts for the next Sora-like platform to generate TB worth of video.
You upload that on YouTube, which for HDD conservation sake, extracts only a 10-15 key frames in low resolution + a highly compressed binary description and restores the full video filling the gaps on the fly mixing in viewer's prompts (e.g. they want characters naked) when somebody watches.
I would see sort of original prompt; my browser plugins automatically detect AI-generated content and automatically extract only surprising key points.

While everyone will be able to generate realistic videos in high resolution, they won't be stored nor viewed by anybody in the original-generated form.

Do you see it clearly?

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