As far as AI art goes, I'm also mostly against it, but don't really care if I see it here - it'd just make me personally skip the song alltogether, but if the music is real, then they should get a chance for visibility.

3d ago

Steam hardware survey for February 2026. What happened? Why did it lose such a big percentage?

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Mikina @programming.dev 3d ago

It's also possible that the hype simply died down. Windows 11 forced updates have been done and forgotten, internet has moved on to the next thing, and people who tried switching to linux started encountering small issues and inconveniences with new games or the system and moved back to Windows.

I can very well imagine that someone who switched "just for the memes" will give up once a first inconvenience pops up, and it eventually will no matter how you look at it.

5d ago

How did you meet your significant person?

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Mikina @programming.dev 5d ago

When I was looking through the official marriage papers you submit when oficially requesting marriage, to see what I need to do if we would want to get married, that option simply wasn't there in the checkboxes. And I asked for clarification, and apparently our laws don't allow that combination, at least not as a part of the marriage process.

I haven't really looked into it more, and a friend told me it's very probable that we could just choose one of the available options and then submit a separate request to change my surename to add the missing one. It was also more than a year ago, and someone also told me that our marriage laws did go through a revision recently and it might be actually possible to choose both for both now. I'll have to re-check again, but I'm certain that at least last year, it wasn't possible.

Oh, one option I found a funny loophole was that we could marry, she'd take both, then divorce while keeping our new surenames (so she still has both), then marry again and I'd take both. I would end up with three surenames, mine twice (since she already has both, and I'm keeping mine and taking her current at the point of second marriage), but while that would be pretty funny, realistically it's easier to just file for a surename change after wedding :D

As for the reason, who knows? But an ancient patriarchic custom is probably the reason, I'd guess that especially historically it's not really common for a man to take his wife surename in general, and usually it's just the bride either taking the man's or keeping both.

6d ago

Middle East: Using AI to stop dissent before it even starts

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Mikina @programming.dev 6d ago

Both are mesh networks, with slight differences. The idea is that volunteers run relay nodes with LORA (which has a range od a few KM, depending on visibility), and you also have client devices, and if you have a large local community of enough nodes and users, you can have an off-grid communication network where data is being sent node to node (both client and relay) before it finds the recipient. Both networks are encrypted.

Most cities already have a pretty good coverage. Meshtastic has a few issues that Meshcore tries to solve, mostly in regards to scaling, but tbh I havent researched it enough to be able to correctly list them (just like this answer is mostly a simplification). There's plenty of blog posts that explain it a lot better.

You can get standalone Meshcore devices (with a screen and keyboard) for around 70$, and devices that connct to your phone through bluetooth and you send messages through the network from an app for even cheaper.

My guess is that it's not entirely adversary-proof, but it probably beats having a phone with you to communicate when you're doing anti-goverment sruff.

And if you're asking about Anarchist Library, there's this site that has a lot of articles, zines and books about good operational security, how to behave on protests, what to (not) bring, first aid against common crowd control, and general anti-goverment guirrella stuff so you can protest as safely as possible.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index

6d ago

How did you meet your significant person?

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Mikina @programming.dev 6d ago

She lived in an entirely different city across the country (Europe, so like two hours of train ride).

She saw me on Facebook, based on photos from a goth festival in our city, so I got a message on Messanger from a profile without a profile picture and no mutual friends. We talked for a bit, I was single at the time, and we eventually decided to meet. I had no idea how she looks like, and I kind of found this idea of a blind date funny - either it works, or I'll get a good story out of it.

We decided to meet and go to a local goth scene hangout, and not only she was really pretty, she also brought two bottles of mead. We managed to drink both of them before even getting to the hangout, where it turned out that she was actually not only a classmate of my best friend (a long time ago), but also used to be part of the scene around 5 years ago (before I joined it), before she went no-contact and changed her nickname due to a relationship (that eventually turned out really terrible). So, she knew most of my friends.

That was 7 years ago. At the time she was living in a small flat, after just getting out of a 7 y.o terrible relationship that she couldn't leave due to having a mortgage, but she managed to save enough on a minimal wage to leave when she found out he was cheating. Her grandma was living with her in her small flat, and she was really a terrible person, even had her aunt with the most entitled child move in, and they were even worse. Always arguing, screaming, being rude, and just acting like dicks. She let them live with her, just because they had nowhere to go, even though she was earning a minimal wage. Them saying that "If we don't like it, we should move out", or that "I shouldn't argue, because I don't live here", while I was actually helping her with rent they weren't doing anything for was insane.

I kept visiting her almost daily, spending time in the one small 5x5m room she had for herself, even though it was two hour train ride. During covid, I was mostly staying at her place, and since she loved animals (her mother worked at a zoo, before cancer got her), we discussed what we want to get, and pet racoon was high on the list. And when she said that we will get a racoon once we live together, I immediately found a flat in my city, and we moved in together around 5 years ago. We stole the ashes of her mother and went no-contact with the people living at her old flat. They can burn in hell.

Unfortunately, racoons are not easily legal to own, but we got a lot of different animals instead. She also helped me with starting to make our own goth events, DJ, and help local promoters, and now we're responsible for more than half of goth events that happen in our city. She's now earning more that I do (and I work in IT), and I'm really happy how did everything turned out. We have no idea how did the rest of her familly end up, but we don't really care.

We are kind of planning a wedding, with only witnesses, but so far what's stopping is that I can't find my birth certificate, and that it looks like it's not possible for both of us to have both surnames (the options are one of us keeps theirs, and the other get's both, or we choose one only, and we both want to have both), so we kind of didn't want to bother with it for a while.

1w ago

Middle East: Using AI to stop dissent before it even starts

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

Now is the time to look into Meshtastic or Meshcore.

The devices are pretty cheap, and the more poeple have it ready when needed, the better.

Also, stock up on guides from the anarchist library. Having an offline copy so you don't have to search for it later will help with going under the radar.

1w ago

New rule for filesystem developers

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

You are right, I'll fix it. Always confuse those two :D

1w ago

New beta Stackoverflow frontend. Hot or Not?

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

That's so ugly it hurts to look at.

Why is there so much empty space? The visual design is attrocious, the columns are just randomly placed without any thought, margins or symmetry.

It looks like it's incomplete? There are now visual guidelines to separate elements, it's hard to read and it looks like it's missing something.

1w ago

spicy pillow rule

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

Just in case people are not aware, stabbing batteries is way worse than I expected.

I knew it's a fire hazard, but not just how much of a fire hazard. It's one of those things that's worth to see, in case you ever see a battery like that and think "No rush, what's the worst that could happen".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unCD1kT0Zq8

1w ago

New rule for filesystem developers

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

The only joy I've ever gotten from LLMs was telling my work-heavily-recommended Claude that I want him to act, talk and treat me like SHODAN in every conversation.

1w ago

New rule for filesystem developers

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

Hmm, I wonder how well would formal verification work with LLMs. I'm not really a fan of vibe coding, but the little I know about formal verification, it could very well work as a way how to prove your vibe-coded slop isn't shit.

I've looked into formal verification once few years ago, but it's too much math and thinking for me to grasp. If I remember it right, I guess the problem would be that you'd (or, LLM would, in this case) have to correctly describe the code in the formal verification language, and it would have to match 1:1 with the code, which is a point of failure? So we'd be back to square one, but instead of having to verify every single line of code, you'd have to check the proof. But maybe I'm wrong.

1w ago

New rule for filesystem developers

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

The scary part is the mental state he was able to get into with only a randomly generated text. If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend the Down the Rabbit Hole video about it, although it's pretty heartbreaking. So much wasted talent.

There's people like him who are similarly psychotic, but couldn't usually get to the point where they could access a tool that would trigger them. Personalized chatbots were mostly a niche non-tech savy person doesn't really get to that easily.

Now, it's everywhere. A lot of people will loose their sanity over this.

1w ago

New rule for filesystem developers

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

I wouldn't be surprised if something like that popped up very soon. Probably is in the works on someone's drive already.

I remember hearing an arugment against AI coding that if it's so good, why aren't there apps popping up left and right? Which was true at the time.

Now? In the past month, I've seen a pretty in-depth Murloc-tamagotchi addon in WoW (that kills your FPS), a whole open-source custom World of Warcraft client, an E2E Tor-based messenger (that signs messages with 128b CBC key), a game engine based on a lost Standart Model of physics that was mentioned by Tesla, but lost to time, that someone reverse engineered (which had very TempleOS vibes, as far as the authors mental state goes), a Matrix protocol on Cloudfare microservices (that skipped message signature verification), and I could go on.

Open-source is going to become a hell to navigate. I was already anxious about using FOSS tools due to malicious typosquatting clones, supply chain attacks and general security of using someone's FOSS code on my PC. Now, add vibe coded shit to the mix, and finding a good FOSS projects and tools will be hell :(

1w ago

Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software after its code was found tied to US surveillance efforts | Fortune

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

You can stream video and voice over IRC?

1w ago

The Junior Developer Is Going Extinct

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

Tbh from my experiences, AI is also turning current senior devs into juniors. The skill erosion is real, and I could see it on myself just after a week of trying out Claude (since we've gotten access at my job).

The skills I've spent a great part of my life acquiring are really not worth whatever advantages AI use may have, even if I just did my job to earn a paycheck and didn't care about the quality of my output, as long as it's acceptable. It may feel easier now, but eventually you will have to pass another interview, and good luck when the last time you actually coded without AI was a year ago.

1w ago

Ten Commandments Posters Must Go Up in Schools Before Louisiana Families Can Sue, Says Federal Court

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Mikina @programming.dev 1w ago

If your school is looking for a poster that passes all the requirements to hang, here are some tips.

2w ago

‘It was ready to kill and blackmail’: Anthropic’s Claude AI sparks alarm, says company policy chief

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Mikina @programming.dev 2w ago

If I would've trained a markov chain on a set of cyberpunk novels, and other texts with similar context, I'm pretty sure I would've also gotten an "AI" that would be ready to kill and blackmail, lol.