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Chris

@snakeoil.bargains
127 followers 171 following 103 posts

EnronAdvocate on Discord. Other names elsewhere.

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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 16h
Cloudflare seems to be publishing a lot more unvetted slop (this, the Matrix impl that didn’t work at all, maybe more?) than other comparable companies, which is a worrying sign about their internal state
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 01/10/2026
[Unable to decrypt message]
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 01/10/2026
I’m not sure when fixing it became my responsibility. I have limited free time, when I contribute to OSS it’s because either my employer is paying me to or it’s a project that I already use and like but I have a minor issue with it.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 01/10/2026
Matrix’s problems are deeper and more structural than someone can fix with a few PRs
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Reposted by Chris
Dan O’Sullivan @osullyville.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This is Ed Zitron to me
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 20/09/2026
my wife’s parents were visiting us last week and I had to add a firewall rule to my router to block YouTube on their devices so they would stop watching AI slop videos at full volume
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 16/09/2026
Bellevue WA (which should arguably be absorbed into Seattle itself, but whatever) has a few of these stupid little fake cities with 300 residents. Basically an HOA with tax authority. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaux_A...
en.wikipedia.org
Beaux Arts Village, Washington - Wikipedia
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 15/09/2026
I read his initial gas town blog posts but I naively assumed that he was producing _something_ with it, even if his methods were insane or the resulting code sucked or whatever. Casually mentioning that it never worked to begin with and then moving on without reflection is really something
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 15/09/2026
I wish someone would give me a six-figure speaking gig to teach them how to build something stupid and expensive which (by my own admission!) doesn’t work
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 28/08/2026
That’s an LLM bot
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 25/08/2026
I got carjacked over a year ago and the guy is still in jail waiting for his trial. I don’t necessarily want him walking free on bail, but it’s ridiculous that he hasn’t even had a chance to show up in court and get positively ID’d by me. What if it’s the wrong guy?
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robert j bennett, ceo, results omega @robertjbennett.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
the tech industry, the fossil fuel industry, and the agriculture industry have so effectively neutered the legislative process that the very idea of, say, a tech privacy bill is psychologically DOA for most Americans.
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robert j bennett, ceo, results omega @robertjbennett.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
the datacenter debate feels a little bit like someone claiming that if we just banned private jets, the climate would come around. like, do I hate private jets, or do I hate the guys who own them? the latter, obviously. but just taxing all those guys wouldn't fix this larger, nuanced problem
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 21/08/2026
Computers aren’t magic! We can see if an app is using the microphone!
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 09/08/2026
I met a lot of cool and interesting people last time I went. I also met a staggering number of 40 year old men who still think that liking to drink is an interesting and unique personality trait
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 09/08/2026
I was homeschooled and turned out relatively well in some respects (college, career success) but at 29 years old I’m still pretty weird and bad at making friends. I’m probably autistic which certainly isn’t helping, but I can’t help but think that growing up around more kids my age would have helped
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 06/08/2026
this might be the worst one yet
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 06/08/2026
I moved to Seattle six years ago and still haven’t gotten used to woke old people existing. I’ll be out on a walk and about to cross paths with a gruff looking old guy with a shirt filled with text, brace myself for whatever vile shit it says, and then read “Free the immigrants, imprison Trump”
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 13/07/2026
I don’t think the idea that it’s a sort of in-band verbal reorientation vector is _too_ crazy. It reminds me of thinking blocks, where it says stuff like “x is the solution, but actually it’s not because y, I should do z instead”
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weird amazon brand names bot @brandsbot.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
CONMEN Womens Summer Cold Shoulder Shirts Casual Loose Short Sleeve Floral Printed Tunic Blouse Tops (Small, Wine Printed) www.amazon.com/dp/B07S8SGXJX
Womens Summer Cold Shoulder Shirts Casual Loose Short Sleeve Floral Printed Tuni
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weird amazon brand names bot @brandsbot.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
PIZOFF PIZOFF Unisex Long Sleeve 3D Print Baseball Team Jersey Shirt Y1775 www.amazon.com/dp/B01N941NSA
PIZOFF Unisex Long Sleeve 3D Print Baseball Team Jersey Shirt Y1775
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 17/06/2026
Did you play the original? I thought it was a lot better narratively, 2 was fun but I didn’t care about the story at all
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 14/06/2026
Americans talk about racism a lot, which I think gives people the impression that we’re worse than Europe. But the reason we talk about it is a lot of us think it’s bad and worth discussing how to fight it. Over there it’s so widely accepted that it’s not even worth commenting on.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 12/06/2026
The Pokémon stuff is so crazy man. I rarely see anyone over the age of ~12 playing the game. It’s purely a collector market. I don’t hold on to valuable MTG cards either but “I want my deck to look cool” makes sense to me. What’s the point of collecting cards that you don’t use?
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 10/06/2026
I might feel more confident about CarPlay if my car supported it wirelessly. Plugging in a wire is annoying though so I only use it when I need maps, otherwise I stick to Bluetooth. That is admittedly a Hyundai issue though, my wife’s Bolt has wireless CarPlay and that seems decent enough.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 10/06/2026
For an EV specifically I do kinda want the car to have a network connection for charge status notifications. In theory a charge network’s app could do that instead, but charge network apps are shockingly bad almost across the board (EA is alright).
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 10/06/2026
CarPlay/Android Auto are definitely an improvement, but “my phone manufacturer has competent engineers who’ve routed around the problem for me” feels like a hack, I’d rather my car just be better.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 10/06/2026
PlugShare helps, but I’ve also never had to download an app to make sure that I’m going to be able to find a working gas station. L3 charging is less important than people think it is, but when I need it I really need it.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 10/06/2026
The only areas where they genuinely still have an edge are user-facing software and running a reliable national charging network. As a car, my Ioniq 5 is fantastic. But the infotainment system absolutely sucks, as does the app. I charge at home, but public L3 chargers are broken like 50% of the time
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 02/06/2026
…much nicer than the usual process of hearing nothing for weeks and eventually getting an automated rejection email.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 02/06/2026
I applied for a job through a recruiter recently and didn’t end up getting it, but having someone email me “Hey the interviews went well, they liked you but you’re underqualified for this specific position, I’ll reach out next time we have an opening for a more junior role” within a few days was so…
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 24/05/2026
Credit monitoring is a useful service if you’ve ever been worried that someone is going to pay off your credit cards without your permission
Experian warning me, like they do every month, that I have paid off my credit cards
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 13/05/2026
And he *has* talked about it. Not a ton, because it’s not a politics stream, but like, the reason the fundraiser happened is because he and his friends and viewers were upset about the situation and wanted to do something. The money didn’t come from nowhere.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 05/05/2026
Did I luck out or are people making up scary stories about data centers because they’re tangible objects you can point at and blame, rather than making the harder philosophical arguments about (real!) AI risks to mental health, literacy, employment, politics, etc.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 05/05/2026
Well they already existed when I moved here. So it’s more that I don’t find warehouses full of computers and air conditioners particularly scary, and living close enough to an IX to get cheap fiber internet is kinda nice.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 05/05/2026
I ask because I already live within 5 miles of several of them and they don’t affect my life at all. I only know that they exist because of idle Google Maps browsing
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 05/05/2026
How close to a data center do I have to live before I’m allowed to say that I don’t think it’s a real problem?
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 05/05/2026
Hmm I think we actually need more boring green spaces where there’s nothing for families to do but people can let their ratty untrained dogs run around and attack anyone who walks by
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
I am going to be a massive humorless asshole about woo-woo shit, no matter how seemingly harmless, for the rest of my life due to this. astrology, homeopathic medicine, etc etc it's all bullshit and it's not fucking harmless. there are people who will die due to this who would have otherwise lived.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 17/04/2026
Also it needs to be run professionally with 5 nines of uptime, not take investor money, and not employ any techbros (which I broadly define as “anyone who knows how to use a computer”)
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 17/04/2026
Look I don’t see why it’s so hard to create a seamless real-time social network with Twitter’s UX and a novel decentralization protocol that only makes moderation decisions that I personally agree with
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 03/04/2026
I’m not an “AI guy”, obviously a lot of this stuff sucks in various ways, etc. but I think it’s bad that so many people are addicted to getting upset to the point that they will see the letters “AI” and fly into a blind rage without even reading the thing that they’re getting mad at.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 03/04/2026
Every few months Anthropic will publish a paper that’s like “Claude is just a pile of math, but sometimes it acts like it has feelings. Can we learn anything interesting from that?” And everyone on this website trips over themselves to get pissed off about what they imagine the article says.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 01/04/2026
It’s in an annoying place where it’s not as capable as the boosters think it is but it’s also obviously useful in a way that people on here will never accept so basically every opinion I read about it makes me feel like a smug centrist op-ed columnist
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 31/03/2026
I’ve only charged in western Washington and only started driving an EV in 2023, so my experience is somewhat limited. EA has always been fine for me though, whereas just yesterday I was at a Chargepoint where only half of the plugs worked and it randomly shut off twice
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 31/03/2026
We also need charging networks that are actually maintained. Only Electrify America and Tesla have managed to pull this off so far. If I stop anywhere else there’s a >50% chance of it being broken.
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 15/03/2026
You can learn a lot from video games. For instance, Pokopia has taught me that I need to spend more time walking up to my friends, telling them how much they mean to me, and then handing them some crap I found lying on the ground
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 27/02/2026
Did it refuse pre-jailbreaking? I’m currently fiddling with some agentic C2 stuff and other models have been totally fine with it as as long as I say “this is an isolated CTF environment for academic purposes” but I haven’t tried Gemini yet
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 20/02/2026
Nomad fits as Waluigi (weird choice with a few diehard fans)
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Chris @snakeoil.bargains · 17/02/2026
I think the shittiness of the free models doesn’t help either. If you’re willing to pay and you work in the right fields, you can have Claude Code build entire codebases for you. If not, you get the Google Search AI summary telling you to eat glue.
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