i remember years ago i tried to switch to duckduckgo from google cause yanno google was like "actually lets be evil" and i couldn't do it because ddg didn't reliably show (the good) stack exchange answers

now i just use ddg since stack exchange is dead anyway and also i hope google tanks hard enough when the AI bubble bursts and they go bankrupt that their head spins fast enough they get launched straight into the fucking sun

sorry that sentence got really run on i just wish all google a very datacenters blow up

that post would get me banned from bluesky so fast lmao

i have a lot of anger surrounding tech, a thing i used to love with all my heart

@eniko big same

@eniko Yeah me too :/

@eniko yeah pretty much

@eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place same

@alice @eniko

I love things about it that are being ignored for pure profit. i don’t think tech is done, but most folks rather let others tell em how to use things than be curious cause according to this system curiosity shouldn’t pay

@cyberquixote @alice @eniko very far from done, so many things can be improved, but everyone just shrugs

@SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt @eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place @cyberquixote@infosec.exchange it's not done, but seems people who want to improve things are a minority now

@SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt @eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place @cyberquixote@infosec.exchange looking at how eagerly the foss world adopted slop machines, for example

@alice @eniko @cyberquixote yeag

@cyberquixote @alice @eniko When curiosity hasn't been ground out of people by school, anyway.

@alice @eniko same :(

@eniko the possibilities of tech have been answered with the miseries of the tech bro.

@eniko aye

@eniko fr 😢

@eniko where I'm at right now is I basically want this industry to die and just think it would be funny if a product we made was what did it in.

@eniko and I'd be fine in a hollowed-out ecosystem because, unlike techbros and investors, I'm not allergic to "small potatoes." (I'd also be fine doing something that's not computers). By all means, let's make it impossible to ever charge for software. My personal vendetta is against corporations that exploit artists, like Adobe. Let them turn into a brand for a photo backup service owned by Alibaba.

@eniko
anger around the destruction of something you love is valid and a sign of that love

@eniko Sigh, yeah, yeah...

@eniko Same. Usually followed by days of procrastination and a profound feeling of burnout.

@eniko Make computers dorky again

@eniko feeling the same. It sucks to have something you loved changed to an unrecognizable state out from under you.

@eniko I can relate to that very much!

@eniko Yeah, I’m pretty angry about how shitty everything to do woth tech has gotten, and the last year has just been everything racing to get worse. Wish I’d done a trade as a hobby instead of more computer.

@eniko Since retiring, I've been looking back and thinking we should have left the goddamn rocks in the ground instead of teaching them to think.

@eniko @ErickaSimone *same*.

@eniko ...with horror I realize I may in fact be turning into my father in at least one aspect

@eniko "that post would get me banned from Bluesky so fast" is a sign it's a good thing I never went back.

@eniko when you think about it from a JOB CREATION standpoint, the socially responsible thing to do is vandalize data centers until they have to employ full time on site security.

@eniko straight into the sun, yes

@eniko Y'know I used to use DDG and quite freqently use !g to get markedly better results from Google. It was a trade-off, worse results but at least parts of my search traffic didn't go to Google anymore

Lately I still have that habit of using !g when I feel the results are lacking, but I no longer get better results on Google. Not because DDG has gotten better but because 1) Google has gotten worse and 2) the results just don't exist anymore

Information doesn't exist on the Internet anymore!

@eniko https://kind.social/@wehpudicabok/117317910370913792 I saw (a screenshot from a Twitter post with a screenshot of a repost of) this post yesterday and it goes sooo hard. The internet is a store but it used to be a library

@eniko I think it could be just about the greatest thing ever if the fake "AI" bubble pop could take down the current search engines and we get classic search engines back as a thing.

I just... I don't know how to even say just how much I am sick and fed up of typing in search terms and getting results that do not even contain my search terms. (This is not even getting into all the SEO bull that the current systems tend to boost above all the real stuff.)

@eniko at this point i think we should get a stack refund rather than an exchange.

@eniko yeah. still remember being excited by it. but also, my first instance of "maybe this centralizing thing isn't all that good, eh" a few years later... hahahahaaaaaah

@eniko i still use it occasionally and find great context for the responses given

@eniko yes and it was absolutely dog, what a miserable place. but we'd rather have that than... 2025 internet

@eniko Today I got some passably useful Rust answers from it!

Granted, they were 14 years old…

@eniko

I so do... Stack Exchange used to be so great, a wonderful source of knowledge on a whole host of subjects that was easily searchable...

Now both it and Google have both gone so much to hell that it's unlikely you could find a good answer on one with the other.

@eniko i still go there a lot ❤️ unlike #slop bot answers, the one on SO tend to be pretty accurate (at least if you take the time to look through 2-3 of them for an answer, rather than just blindly trusting top pick)

#NoAI #NoSlop #ensloppification #AI #LLM

@eniko

> y'all remember when stack exchange existed and was relevant?

You mean the time when we uploaded to the SE the same questions & answers we now upload to Claude and ChatGPT, and made them the private company's IP but still kept them publicly indexable and referenceable, leaving a trace for the posterity of a real world validated challenge encountered by a bona fide human and resolved through interaction with other humans? Yea ring a bell. They sold that IP to OpenAI Anthropic

@eniko
Noice data thanks

@eniko it's slop exchange now.