I'm exploring purchasing a 3D printer, as someone with no experience with them. I think I'm capable of using one, but acknowledge I need to do a lot of research.
I want something with at least a 300mm print bed, and the QIDI Plus5 just came out, which is tempting. I don't really think I'd use multicolor, so not worried about that right now.
If anyone has any introductory resources they'd recommend, I'm all ears.
Been working on my audio player for the past week, and have made some good progress. It started with Spotify no longer authenticating, so had to troubleshoot that. Turns out, http://localhost is considered insecure for the redirect URI, and now Spotify requires something different but http://127.0.0.1 is considered totally acceptable. I understand that they are slightly different, but it does seem to be a weird change that Spotify rolled out recently.
Once I got that working again, it kind of put me in the headspace to continue developing features I have been wanting to add. So I created a new page in the app to allow changing what git branch is currently being used. Previously, I had to SSH into the RPi to change branches, but could do a git pull from the app itself. Now, all the different branches are listed dynamically, with the ability to switch between branches. I then went down a rabbit hole trying to schedule the RPi to close the current instance and then relaunch it with the updated code. I managed to get it working at one point, but then I cleaned up all the things I tried but didn't work, and then it stopped working. I felt like after a few days of trying to get it to restart the program, it was no longer worth it and switched back to just restarting the RPi after updating the code.
Being able to switch between branches through the UI will hopefully help with development for me. I can easily switch back to master and use the device normally, and then switch back to whatever branch I am currently working on. Since I forked this project, I don't have a good dev environment set up for my workflow, so I am trying to build out more tools to help me expand the feature set.
Meta commentary on the weekly programming thread
I have been hesitant to post this on this thread the past few days, and also have found myself reading this thread less frequently the past few months. My hesitance is due to AI coded projects becoming the majority of comments on this thread, which do not interest me. I understand for some people, AI is a great tool to use, but with my limited programming experience I need to still be getting the experience of writing code manually. I also find reading about someone trying to figure out a technical issue manually in this thread more interesting than someone who used AI to build a new feature. I am unsure of the solution, and this is just kind of my ramblings on the subject. Maybe, have the first thread of the month be AI-free? I don't think banning AI outright in these threads to be the solution, but maybe occasionally having dedicated AI-free posts could be worthwhile. Especially since non-AI assisted development can be slower, the AI-free threads do not need to be as frequent.
I feel some similar feelings to your meta commentary and this comment felt like the proper time to reply regarding it and that it's been brewing in my head awhile. Both frustration and sadness really.
further feelings/details and TBH probably unnecessary venting
Of course, I'm far more absolute in my views on the topic than most here (opposing all LLM use for any reason), which I won't speak on any further (as my desire is not to engage with *anyone* on the topic in *that* particular way).
But, I just felt this gave me the opportunity to express that the "what are you working on threads" (one of my favorite things on this site) have become far less interesting to me the more LLMs/genAI have become involved to any extent in anything posted. Sort of one of my top enjoyments of Tildes is now gone, or severely hampered at least.
The threads used to give me excitement and that excitement is increasingly dead now. I don't find LLM/genAI-assisted projects interesting or worth my time and I find them in complete opposite alignment with my values.
Using a script to hide anything that uses them has helped, but I can't help but feel like there's just going to be an increasingly smaller and smaller subset of individuals truly creating things on their own without genAI help until it's a ghost town, and that's just massively depressing to me and can't help but feel we're losing something in the process. Maybe I'm wrong and we'll get past this absolute stain on history and technology someday.
But my absolutism is a rather minority view amongst this crowd I think, and I don't expect the site to bend to my expectations, but I lament it nonetheless. I fight it in my own ways away from here regardless of feeling like it's a lost cause and society and humanity is sacrificing something we'll never get back... and so on. I appreciate the real crafted stuff people make and post. I create my own things out of spite and wanting to put into the world the kind of thing I want to see in the world more. And I appreciate anyone who has enjoyed what I have posted. Etc.
Enough people still care that maybe there's a way through the mess.
It's also absolutely possible at some point it will be time for me to move on from this community/site and stick to the AI-free zones I already frequent. Maybe that time will end up being sooner than I thought. Who knows anymore. It's slowly eroding into something that I find less and less interesting overall and sometimes quite frustrating and the recent discussions here about a number of issues and how people feel or don't feel about the community have sort of left me with a mixed bag of feelings that is certainly far less positive than when I first joined the site. People specifically using "noise" tags in retaliatory ways is massively toxic and nothing will be done about that kind of abuse tbh
(Note: this isn't an invitation to anyone to debate with me in particular (feel free to with anyone interested!) the merits, usefulness, or feelings of "inevitability" of genAI/LLMs in any regard or for anyone to explain why I shouldn't feel the way I do. There is no defense (of personal use in particular, work use / labor is complicated) I find adequate- to me it is a political stance and one incompatible with me. If anyone wants to know how I feel, visit the links in my bio or read what I've written on my site (again, just not with the intent to debate them)
I just wanted to express that I've felt feelings about these threads in particular, that are in some small way similar to the ones expressed here)
Maybe you won't see this if I've already been filtered out but as an AI-curious person I have nothing but respect for your nay-AI absolutism.
I agree that it is disgusting how business and accelerationists are forcing it on everything and everyone. Hope you can find a way to stick around. I don't want to long for a world where humans collectively need each other more than they need AI. That world is here right now, but it may be rapidly evaporating.
I agree a lot with what you have shared here. I think I probably align relatively closely with you regarding AI usage, at least where it is currently at and how it is used. Over the past few months, it does seem like Tildes is becoming more primarily a place to discuss AI, and is losing some of the other things that initially drew me to this site. Part of that is natural, since AI dominates the news right now, is changing a lot of tech oriented jobs, and tildes userbase tends to lean more techy. A lot of the intention behind my comment is meant to be being the change I want to see on tildes, rather than disengaging from it.
I agree, it was naturally going to happen, so I should not be surprised at least. Especially given the unfortunate wide acceptance of it amongst the tech crowd. I am even part (or was?) of the techie crowd and have been a long time, and so watching everything I once loved go the direction it's going is particularly piercing emotionally.
In a truly DIY (without AI help) sense? Yes, still excited. Electronics/mechanical thing repair, solving problems with my brain instead of asking an LLM, doing stuff with my home servers, building things, 3D printing? etc. Hell yeah. There's something still there for me it's just a completely different landscape now. I don't know that I'll ever bring myself to work in tech ever again, but in my personal life there's still plenty of joy to find.
The LLM techies will have their corporate cyberpunk dystopia and I'll just remain on the outskirts, sitting in the muck, piecing together what little bits I can from the refuse that remains. Or something melodramatic like that. If I had the opportunity to live a life of solitude in the mountains or on a boat or whatever else with barely-functioning internet and a beat-up thinkpad with an old version of linux on it, it'd be hard to say no
A lot of the intention behind my comment is meant to be being the change I want to see on tildes, rather than disengaging from it.
Yeah, there are days where I feel like embodying this, and there are other days where I feel like it's better just to take my energy elsewhere. Myself and this site are sort of like a friendship or relationship where you're slowly realizing you're no longer compatible with each other and it might be time to put things to rest and move on. Who knows, I'm still here for now :)
On your Meta comment, I think you might want to write at least a small blurb on what you consider AI or not. Or else from what I've seen, you're gonna get a massive debate just on that topic. There's quite a divide between AI assisted vs. vibecoding. I don't frequent Tildes as much but in the past weeks I've shared random tidbits of my projects here and read up on others. I found a lot of interesting hardware ones (like that 3D printer @ShroudedScribe said they might buy). I have not found too many vibecoded 2-week projects. Could be just me not reading enough.
Yeah, this week is probably a poor example, since when I posted there was no AI project for this week. I think what I am referring to is the idea of the projects where AI is the subject. A couple examples I have seen commented here before:
"I tried [insert specific AI model] at work for the past few weeks. This is what I have found works well and what doesn't for my workflow"
"I compared several different AI models on a variety of tasks, here is how they compare."
"I am setting up a self-hosted AI model for my own use. Here is some in depth breakdown of the process and how I configured it."
"I am using AI to rewrite one of my existing projects in a different language."
I think all of those comments/projects can be interesting. Especially when we are in a stage for AI that I will refer to as "throw everything against the wall to see what sticks" it helps to have people evaluate what is and isn't sticking. I just think that personally the projects that have AI as the subject can drown out some of the other projects in this thread, especially with the speed that AI can work. I am not calling for a ban on AI in this thread, but trying to think of ways that we can give non-AI projects room to exist
I see what you mean now, you meant AI related. My apologies, I just automatically assumed you meant using AI to build as that's just a really hot debate topic atm. I think that can probably be arranged by having a comp.non ai subtopic where if people can post projects there with 0 AI involvement.
I also agree with your point that AI is a little too hot. I still use X here and there to check up on tech news and now I do it less and less because all I'm getting is a bunch of influencers trying a myraid of ways to wordsmith their feelings about the latest model. I could not care less. It does not matter how smart or brilliant the influencer is, If I want to try a mode, I'll just run it. That stuff drives me up the wall a lot.
As @0x29A commented, I do think we need non-AI spaces. AI is taking too many part of the internet. I'm on a few subreddits and I literally see vibecoded projects daily.
Cheers mate.
comp.non ai subtopic where if people can post projects there with 0 AI involvement.
Unsure if that is quite the right solution. For standalone posts, tag filtering would solve this issue. To me, the bigger issue is in this thread specifically where the non-AI projects get drowned out, but personally those are the more interesting projects to read about
still use X here and there to check up on tech news and now I do it less and less because all I'm getting is a bunch of influencers trying a myraid of ways to wordsmith their feelings about the latest model. I could not care less.
I find on tildes this is less of an issue since it isn't someone who is trying to build up an internet presence, but is just generally interested in the tech and want to discuss it.
Still refining mums senior citizen games. Amazing how many edge cases you get when software gets loose. You think I’d know after 40 years in the business but eh.
It’s mostly things I never even thought to test for!
I'm still tinkering with my personal link-sharing website, but it's gotten increasingly meta. I've gone back to my devtools roots.
It started out because I'd gotten annoyed with how VS Code is evolving, with too much AI stuff I don't care about in each new release. I use AI all the time, but it's in Shelley and I don't want it in my text editor anymore. (I liked using Github Copilot for autocomplete at the time, but those days are over.) Also, VS Code doesn't work on my tablet or phone.
Since I rarely edit files myself anymore either, maybe I don't need a text editor at all? So, I decided to build personal web app for source browsing. That's gone well. I use it about half the time to look at the source and if I see something I don't like, I ask the AI to refactor it. I plan on adding search next, since that's something I still need VS Code for.
It's reminded me of my early days at Google when there wasn't a good way to search and browse Java code in google3, so I built one as my 20% project. This is much easier nowadays!
Also, my wife asked for help getting her ancient personal website up to date, working on mobile and moved to a new hosting service with https. I offered to get her set up on exe.dev, but she asked me to do it. So I spun up a VM and I typed requests to the AI for her. We asked Shelley to download all files. It's a static website and needs some templating for common layout, so we converted it Eleventy at the AI's recommendation and got a preview website set up. Since everything is easy with AI these days, I asked it to build a file browser / editor admin website, so that she could edit the files directly, with instant preview. Then we uploaded it to github and from there to Cloudflare Pages (her choice). There was a bit of head-scratching at times but it went well. There's no way we could have done that in a couple days before.
One of these days I should do the same for my original, abandoned blog.
Creating a fun workflow to screenshot images for a post in a forum. Reddit has this currently where if you copy a Reddit post on WhatsApp / Discord, you get the reddit logo, title, and the number of comments. It's a small thing but pretty neat. For my workflow, I'm trying to see how far I can go in customization and making it way more fancier looking than Reddit's.
ShroudedScribe | a day ago
I'm exploring purchasing a 3D printer, as someone with no experience with them. I think I'm capable of using one, but acknowledge I need to do a lot of research.
I want something with at least a 300mm print bed, and the QIDI Plus5 just came out, which is tempting. I don't really think I'd use multicolor, so not worried about that right now.
If anyone has any introductory resources they'd recommend, I'm all ears.
IsildursBane | 23 hours ago
Been working on my audio player for the past week, and have made some good progress. It started with Spotify no longer authenticating, so had to troubleshoot that. Turns out, http://localhost is considered insecure for the redirect URI, and now Spotify requires something different but http://127.0.0.1 is considered totally acceptable. I understand that they are slightly different, but it does seem to be a weird change that Spotify rolled out recently.
Once I got that working again, it kind of put me in the headspace to continue developing features I have been wanting to add. So I created a new page in the app to allow changing what git branch is currently being used. Previously, I had to SSH into the RPi to change branches, but could do a git pull from the app itself. Now, all the different branches are listed dynamically, with the ability to switch between branches. I then went down a rabbit hole trying to schedule the RPi to close the current instance and then relaunch it with the updated code. I managed to get it working at one point, but then I cleaned up all the things I tried but didn't work, and then it stopped working. I felt like after a few days of trying to get it to restart the program, it was no longer worth it and switched back to just restarting the RPi after updating the code.
Being able to switch between branches through the UI will hopefully help with development for me. I can easily switch back to master and use the device normally, and then switch back to whatever branch I am currently working on. Since I forked this project, I don't have a good dev environment set up for my workflow, so I am trying to build out more tools to help me expand the feature set.
Meta commentary on the weekly programming thread
I have been hesitant to post this on this thread the past few days, and also have found myself reading this thread less frequently the past few months. My hesitance is due to AI coded projects becoming the majority of comments on this thread, which do not interest me. I understand for some people, AI is a great tool to use, but with my limited programming experience I need to still be getting the experience of writing code manually. I also find reading about someone trying to figure out a technical issue manually in this thread more interesting than someone who used AI to build a new feature. I am unsure of the solution, and this is just kind of my ramblings on the subject. Maybe, have the first thread of the month be AI-free? I don't think banning AI outright in these threads to be the solution, but maybe occasionally having dedicated AI-free posts could be worthwhile. Especially since non-AI assisted development can be slower, the AI-free threads do not need to be as frequent.0x29A | 21 hours ago
I feel some similar feelings to your meta commentary and this comment felt like the proper time to reply regarding it and that it's been brewing in my head awhile. Both frustration and sadness really.
further feelings/details and TBH probably unnecessary venting
Of course, I'm far more absolute in my views on the topic than most here (opposing all LLM use for any reason), which I won't speak on any further (as my desire is not to engage with *anyone* on the topic in *that* particular way).But, I just felt this gave me the opportunity to express that the "what are you working on threads" (one of my favorite things on this site) have become far less interesting to me the more LLMs/genAI have become involved to any extent in anything posted. Sort of one of my top enjoyments of Tildes is now gone, or severely hampered at least.
The threads used to give me excitement and that excitement is increasingly dead now. I don't find LLM/genAI-assisted projects interesting or worth my time and I find them in complete opposite alignment with my values.
Using a script to hide anything that uses them has helped, but I can't help but feel like there's just going to be an increasingly smaller and smaller subset of individuals truly creating things on their own without genAI help until it's a ghost town, and that's just massively depressing to me and can't help but feel we're losing something in the process. Maybe I'm wrong and we'll get past this absolute stain on history and technology someday.
But my absolutism is a rather minority view amongst this crowd I think, and I don't expect the site to bend to my expectations, but I lament it nonetheless. I fight it in my own ways away from here regardless of feeling like it's a lost cause and society and humanity is sacrificing something we'll never get back... and so on. I appreciate the real crafted stuff people make and post. I create my own things out of spite and wanting to put into the world the kind of thing I want to see in the world more. And I appreciate anyone who has enjoyed what I have posted. Etc.
Enough people still care that maybe there's a way through the mess.
It's also absolutely possible at some point it will be time for me to move on from this community/site and stick to the AI-free zones I already frequent. Maybe that time will end up being sooner than I thought. Who knows anymore. It's slowly eroding into something that I find less and less interesting overall and sometimes quite frustrating and the recent discussions here about a number of issues and how people feel or don't feel about the community have sort of left me with a mixed bag of feelings that is certainly far less positive than when I first joined the site. People specifically using "noise" tags in retaliatory ways is massively toxic and nothing will be done about that kind of abuse tbh
(Note: this isn't an invitation to anyone to debate with me in particular (feel free to with anyone interested!) the merits, usefulness, or feelings of "inevitability" of genAI/LLMs in any regard or for anyone to explain why I shouldn't feel the way I do. There is no defense (of personal use in particular, work use / labor is complicated) I find adequate- to me it is a political stance and one incompatible with me. If anyone wants to know how I feel, visit the links in my bio or read what I've written on my site (again, just not with the intent to debate them)
I just wanted to express that I've felt feelings about these threads in particular, that are in some small way similar to the ones expressed here)
xk3 | 10 hours ago
Maybe you won't see this if I've already been filtered out but as an AI-curious person I have nothing but respect for your nay-AI absolutism.
I agree that it is disgusting how business and accelerationists are forcing it on everything and everyone. Hope you can find a way to stick around. I don't want to long for a world where humans collectively need each other more than they need AI. That world is here right now, but it may be rapidly evaporating.
Reminds me a bit of energy slaves
0x29A | an hour ago
I don't necessarily have a lot to say in response, other than I see this comment and appreciate it!
IsildursBane | 20 hours ago
I agree a lot with what you have shared here. I think I probably align relatively closely with you regarding AI usage, at least where it is currently at and how it is used. Over the past few months, it does seem like Tildes is becoming more primarily a place to discuss AI, and is losing some of the other things that initially drew me to this site. Part of that is natural, since AI dominates the news right now, is changing a lot of tech oriented jobs, and tildes userbase tends to lean more techy. A lot of the intention behind my comment is meant to be being the change I want to see on tildes, rather than disengaging from it.
0x29A | 20 hours ago
I agree, it was naturally going to happen, so I should not be surprised at least. Especially given the unfortunate wide acceptance of it amongst the tech crowd. I am even part (or was?) of the techie crowd and have been a long time, and so watching everything I once loved go the direction it's going is particularly piercing emotionally.
In a truly DIY (without AI help) sense? Yes, still excited. Electronics/mechanical thing repair, solving problems with my brain instead of asking an LLM, doing stuff with my home servers, building things, 3D printing? etc. Hell yeah. There's something still there for me it's just a completely different landscape now. I don't know that I'll ever bring myself to work in tech ever again, but in my personal life there's still plenty of joy to find.
The LLM techies will have their corporate cyberpunk dystopia and I'll just remain on the outskirts, sitting in the muck, piecing together what little bits I can from the refuse that remains. Or something melodramatic like that. If I had the opportunity to live a life of solitude in the mountains or on a boat or whatever else with barely-functioning internet and a beat-up thinkpad with an old version of linux on it, it'd be hard to say no
Yeah, there are days where I feel like embodying this, and there are other days where I feel like it's better just to take my energy elsewhere. Myself and this site are sort of like a friendship or relationship where you're slowly realizing you're no longer compatible with each other and it might be time to put things to rest and move on. Who knows, I'm still here for now :)
IndieGamesCafe | 21 hours ago
On your Meta comment, I think you might want to write at least a small blurb on what you consider AI or not. Or else from what I've seen, you're gonna get a massive debate just on that topic. There's quite a divide between AI assisted vs. vibecoding. I don't frequent Tildes as much but in the past weeks I've shared random tidbits of my projects here and read up on others. I found a lot of interesting hardware ones (like that 3D printer @ShroudedScribe said they might buy). I have not found too many vibecoded 2-week projects. Could be just me not reading enough.
IsildursBane | 20 hours ago
Yeah, this week is probably a poor example, since when I posted there was no AI project for this week. I think what I am referring to is the idea of the projects where AI is the subject. A couple examples I have seen commented here before:
I think all of those comments/projects can be interesting. Especially when we are in a stage for AI that I will refer to as "throw everything against the wall to see what sticks" it helps to have people evaluate what is and isn't sticking. I just think that personally the projects that have AI as the subject can drown out some of the other projects in this thread, especially with the speed that AI can work. I am not calling for a ban on AI in this thread, but trying to think of ways that we can give non-AI projects room to exist
IndieGamesCafe | 20 hours ago
I see what you mean now, you meant AI related. My apologies, I just automatically assumed you meant using AI to build as that's just a really hot debate topic atm. I think that can probably be arranged by having a comp.non ai subtopic where if people can post projects there with 0 AI involvement.
I also agree with your point that AI is a little too hot. I still use X here and there to check up on tech news and now I do it less and less because all I'm getting is a bunch of influencers trying a myraid of ways to wordsmith their feelings about the latest model. I could not care less. It does not matter how smart or brilliant the influencer is, If I want to try a mode, I'll just run it. That stuff drives me up the wall a lot.
As @0x29A commented, I do think we need non-AI spaces. AI is taking too many part of the internet. I'm on a few subreddits and I literally see vibecoded projects daily.
Cheers mate.
IsildursBane | an hour ago
Unsure if that is quite the right solution. For standalone posts, tag filtering would solve this issue. To me, the bigger issue is in this thread specifically where the non-AI projects get drowned out, but personally those are the more interesting projects to read about
I find on tildes this is less of an issue since it isn't someone who is trying to build up an internet presence, but is just generally interested in the tech and want to discuss it.
trim | 22 hours ago
Still refining mums senior citizen games. Amazing how many edge cases you get when software gets loose. You think I’d know after 40 years in the business but eh.
It’s mostly things I never even thought to test for!
skybrian | 20 hours ago
I'm still tinkering with my personal link-sharing website, but it's gotten increasingly meta. I've gone back to my devtools roots.
It started out because I'd gotten annoyed with how VS Code is evolving, with too much AI stuff I don't care about in each new release. I use AI all the time, but it's in Shelley and I don't want it in my text editor anymore. (I liked using Github Copilot for autocomplete at the time, but those days are over.) Also, VS Code doesn't work on my tablet or phone.
Since I rarely edit files myself anymore either, maybe I don't need a text editor at all? So, I decided to build personal web app for source browsing. That's gone well. I use it about half the time to look at the source and if I see something I don't like, I ask the AI to refactor it. I plan on adding search next, since that's something I still need VS Code for.
It's reminded me of my early days at Google when there wasn't a good way to search and browse Java code in google3, so I built one as my 20% project. This is much easier nowadays!
Also, my wife asked for help getting her ancient personal website up to date, working on mobile and moved to a new hosting service with https. I offered to get her set up on exe.dev, but she asked me to do it. So I spun up a VM and I typed requests to the AI for her. We asked Shelley to download all files. It's a static website and needs some templating for common layout, so we converted it Eleventy at the AI's recommendation and got a preview website set up. Since everything is easy with AI these days, I asked it to build a file browser / editor admin website, so that she could edit the files directly, with instant preview. Then we uploaded it to github and from there to Cloudflare Pages (her choice). There was a bit of head-scratching at times but it went well. There's no way we could have done that in a couple days before.
One of these days I should do the same for my original, abandoned blog.
IndieGamesCafe | a day ago
Creating a fun workflow to screenshot images for a post in a forum. Reddit has this currently where if you copy a Reddit post on WhatsApp / Discord, you get the reddit logo, title, and the number of comments. It's a small thing but pretty neat. For my workflow, I'm trying to see how far I can go in customization and making it way more fancier looking than Reddit's.