Benjamin Rubin
bnrubin.social.bnrub.in.ap.brid.gy
Benjamin Rubin
@bnrubin.social.bnrub.in.ap.brid.gy
I do tech stuff.

[bridged from https://social.bnrub.in/@bnrubin on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
I may have actually updated mastodon without following a guide. I guess the notes I left for myself last time were correct!
January 12, 2026 at 8:56 PM
Would you love me if I was a computer worm?
December 22, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Code is art and like art you shouldn't use AI to create it.
December 22, 2025 at 4:58 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Rubin
It has come to my attention that Calibre has started adding AI shit into its functionality.

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT CAN I MAYBE HAVE JUST ONE PROGRAM THAT DOESN"T TRY TO DO AI BULLSHIT?

Just one? Maybe?

Anyway, if you want to have an AI-free calibre, you'll need to not upgrade past version 8.10. 😡
December 6, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Please read https://anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/haterdom/2025/08/26/i-am-an-ai-hater.html

I personally vacillate on how strongly I feel about Ai on any given day, but my feelings are close to this at times.
I Am An AI Hater
I am an AI hater. This is considered rude, but I do not care, because I am a hater. To speak politely about AI, you put disclaimers before criticism: of course I’m not against it entirely; perhaps in a few years when; maybe for other purposes, but. You are supposed to debate how and when it should be used. You are supposed to take for granted that it must be useful somewhere, to someone, for something, eventually. People who are rich and smart and respected are saying so, and it would be arrogant to disagree with such people. But I am a hater, which is a kind of integrity. It means I am willing to disagree with anyone, even if it is rude. “But I only use it to–” “Actually if you just—” “The new models–” “I was making fun–” Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself. I am embarrassed for you. Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms, the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output, the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides, the problems with consent and copyright, the way AI tech companies further the patterns of empire, how it’s a con that enables fraud and disinformation and harassment and surveillance, the exploitation of workers, as an excuse to fire workers and de-skill work, how they don’t actually reason and probability and association are inadequate to the goal of intelligence, how people think it makes them faster when it makes them slower, how it is inherently mediocre and fundamentally conservative, how it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy, defined not by its technical features but by its political ones. But I am more than a critic: I am a hater. I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument, because people have already done that. If you’re pushing slop or eating it, you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider. I am here to be rude, because this is a rude technology, and it deserves a rude response. Miyazaki said, “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” Scam Altman said we can surround the solar system with a Dyson Sphere to hold data centers. Miyazaki is right, and Altman is wrong. Miyazaki tells stories that blend the ordinary and the fantastic in ways people find deeply meaningful. Altman tells lies for money. And I’m glad they’re lies. Because the makers of AI aren’t damned by their failures, they’re damned by their goals. They want to build a genie to grant them wishes, and their wish is that nobody ever has to make art again. They want to create a new kind of mind, so they can force it into mindless servitude. Their dream is to invent new forms of life to enslave. And to what end? In a kind of nihilistic symmetry, their dream of the perfect slave machine drains the life of those who use it as well as those who turn the gears. What is life but what we choose, who we know, what we experience? Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. Blissful ignorance and total isolation, warm in the womb of the algorithm, nourished by hungry machines. And even as it consumes those who use it, even as the scammers become their own marks, even as it is sustained by exploited workers slotted in as human filters for algorithmic abuse – some people want to have a little, as a treat. As a joke. Just to make fun of it, just for the busywork, because it’s good enough, right? You understand. I do understand: you want permission. There’s a machine in the corner wrapped in human skin that makes things out of shit and blood to look like whatever you want (as long as you don’t look too closely). You gave one to your teacher and they didn’t notice. Your boss told you to use it after they laid off half the team and it was fine. You fed one to your kids and they liked it. You want to know you can use it sometimes without me thinking less of you. You don’t need me to believe it’s useful, you just want me to be polite about it. But I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. I became a hater by doing precisely those things AI cannot do: reading and understanding human language; thinking and reasoning about ideas; considering the meaning of my words and their context; loving people, making art, living in my body with its flaws and feelings and life. AI cannot be a hater, because AI does not feel, or know, or care. Only humans can be haters. I celebrate my humanity.
anthonymoser.github.io
August 28, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Rubin
I'm pretty sure, it is not a new idea, but as I was waiting for the bus, it suddenly struck me:

LLMs (falsely called "ai") are a cargo cult.

Some people dropped a few boxes with apparently magic qualities on this planet, and we're increasingly rebuilding all our civilisation around them.
August 18, 2025 at 8:53 AM
I have no idea what I'm doing.
June 7, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Rubin
Every time someone says DEI
say “you mean civil rights?”

Every time someone says they are against woke reply
“oh so you’re a segregationist!”

Words have meaning!
Don’t allow their nonsense to stand.

https://bsky.app/profile/elmcitytree.bsky.social/post/3lgigjfo2q22q
February 12, 2025 at 5:43 PM
What better way to spend the evening but writing a blog post.

A blog?! in 2025?!

I work on a lot of silly projects and they need to go somewhere that isn't as ephemeral as Bluesky/Mastodon.
February 10, 2025 at 1:53 AM
My fingers are still freezing, but I managed to make this tiny cable to plug into the JST header on the NVME HAT.

(Perhaps I should have brought the tools in from the shed?)
January 14, 2025 at 5:47 PM
So after much trial and error (and realizing that I had a cable in backwards) I kind of got this NVME hat working for the Raspberry Pi 5.... except it kernel panics upon boot because it doesn't have enough power.

Theres a 5v JST port on the HAT, and the instructions suggest to use it... but […]
Original post on social.bnrub.in
social.bnrub.in
January 13, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by Benjamin Rubin
"He burned our libraries. Why did he do that? It's so destructive. Can you think of anything more evil?"
"I can, child. There is something worse than burning a library."
"How!"
"It happened long ago, this was a time when books were not rare as they are today. Everyone had hundereds of books." […]
Original post on sauropods.win
sauropods.win
January 12, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Hmmm...
January 11, 2025 at 2:48 AM
2025 is going to start with a much needed upgrade of home server stuff:

• Expanding the NAS from 10 to 30TB
• Finally adding 10GB connectivity to the NAS and main desktop PC.
• Adding a new Raspberry Pi 5 to the rack
• Adding an old Raspberry Pi 4 to the rack (maybe?)

I also want to get […]
Original post on social.bnrub.in
social.bnrub.in
January 2, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Every time I need to touch truenas, I take a look at the application list and find a ton of new tools that I want to install and then never use again.
December 23, 2024 at 3:47 AM
November 5, 2024 at 2:02 PM
I don't trust myself to make a straight cut on the next part of my backyard fence build, so I'm designing and printing a guide/fence for my circular saw.
November 4, 2024 at 2:51 AM
I bought 2.5 pounds of candy to give out and only 2 small groups stopped at my door last night.
November 1, 2024 at 12:56 PM
I somehow have like a 3 hour block of time this morning with no meetings or things that need my direct attention (probably jinxing myself here) and I can spend it putting together some neat project stuff.
October 30, 2024 at 2:00 PM
Hmm.. I mean technically yes, but I don't think that's what this 'wind powered' tag is supposed to be used for.
October 27, 2024 at 9:02 PM
Hrm. I don't think I'll be opening this PDF. Glad to see that [payment method] for [amount] went through successfully though.
October 9, 2024 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Benjamin Rubin
The rise of Mastodon has made me so much more aware of government services requiring us to use private companies’ systems to communicate with them and access services.

Sitting on a Dutch train just now I was shown on a screen “feeling unsafe in the train? Contact us via WhatsApp”.

What if I […]
Original post on fosstodon.org
fosstodon.org
October 6, 2024 at 1:23 PM
Randomly came across https://posting.sh/ the other day. Its the kind of tool that makes me wish that I had a new project to work on it with.
September 13, 2024 at 6:08 PM
Well. 24.04 doesn't work right on this laptop
August 30, 2024 at 5:19 AM