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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
Admin
completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location
Ottawa
Birthday
1987-12-20
Pronouns
he/him (EN)
matrix @fastfinge:interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
12mo
@Fragglemuppet My big problem with dreams in fiction is that they're always foreshadowing, or they mean something. If you search the fedidreams hashtag, you'll see that mine almost never do.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
12mo
Oh, I wrote down this post this morning and meant to post it, but never did: last night I dreamed that the company where I work put me in charge of our next business-critical project: shipping flumps to every single contractor, employee, customer, and prospect. Apparently, according to the slideshow presentation in my dream, flumps are the perfect analogy for digital accessibility: they're long, floppy, and multi-coloured. In the dream, this made perfect sense.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
12mo
Transphobia Haven’t read it yet, but this looks interesting. FULL EDITZ 1: The Sorcerer's Stone

Harry feels no one deserves to be insulted for not having friends, having been bullied by his cousin all his life. So he takes no time in approaching Hermione after he overhears Parvati telling Lavender that she’s crying in a girls’ bathroom after Ron insults her for not having any friends.

This is the first part of a long series of works (FULL EDITZ) that I’m constructing.

Pure Harmony + other couples blossoming with time.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47479234
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
12mo
@simon Drivers and other low paid workers aren’t people. How could you forget that basic fact of capitalism? Are you some kind of communist antifa traitor?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
12mo
@CarrieOnA11y AirTag. Apple is the only company I’d trust with the location of my valuables at all times.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
AI text Well, because that was so strange, the obvious next step was to see what R1 does with Hunt The Wumpus! Why is this so dark and terrifying? I gave it a prompt to show what we're doing:
"HUNT THE WUMPUS

YOU ARE IN ROOM 20
TUNNELS LEAD TO 13 16 19

SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?M
WHERE TO?13

I FEEL A DRAFT
YOU ARE IN ROOM 13
TUNNELS LEAD TO 12 14 20

SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?M
WHERE TO?20

YOU ARE IN ROOM 20
TUNNELS LEAD TO 13 16 19
SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?"

And then I got started:
M
A faint, metallic tang hangs in the air—like blood drying on stone. The walls hum with a low-frequency vibration, as if the mountain itself is breathing. Your torch flickers, casting jagged shadows that twist like grasping fingers. Somewhere in the labyrinth, the Wumpus stirs.
Choose wisely. The abyss watches.
20
YOU ARE IN ROOM 20
TUNNELS LEAD TO 13 16 19
The torchlight gutters violently—a wet, guttural snort echoes through the caverns, closer now. Your boot crunches something brittle. Bones. Small ones. Rodent? Human finger joints? The draft from tunnel 19 carries the stench of rancid meat and… musky fur. Your arrow hand twitches. One wrong turn, and the dripping jaws find your throat.
SHOOT OR MOVE (S-M)?
S
YOU NOCK AN ARROW
The bowstring creaks as you draw it taut. Shadows writhe on the walls—are those claws? A low, rumbling growl vibrates through the stone beneath your boots. Tunnel 19 exhales a hot, meat-reeking breath.
ENTER ARROW PATH (e.g., 13-16-19)
5 rooms max. Miss, and the hunter becomes prey.
Your pulse roars. Choose fast—the dark moves.
19
THE ARROW WHISTLES THROUGH 19
Silence.
Then—a wet, gurgling ROAR shakes dust from the ceiling. The stench of ruptured organs floods the tunnel as your arrow finds its mark. You follow the sound, torch trembling in hand.
There, in the crimson-smeared chamber: the Wumpus—a mountain of matted fur and serrated teeth—twitches in its death throes. One obsidian claw scrapes futilely at the arrow protruding from its milky eye. The cave falls still.
YOU WIN. But the victory tastes of bile. Its pups—blind and mewling—curl in the shadows. The mountain never forgets.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes The nice thing about openrouter is it's pay as you go, and they have a couple hundred models.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
AI text @stirlock I don't know. And I don't think I want to know.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes Right now I''m using it through openrouter.ai.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
AI text To illustrate my point about how absolutely unhinged deepseek R1 is, I gave it the opening to the classic text game Adventure. To keep it fair, I set the temperature to 0.6, and only allowed myself simple commands. This is what happened. I, uh, I need an adult! Mommy, I don't wanna play this game anymore! I'm scared.

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.
Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and
down a gully.
enter building
You step through the creaking wooden door into the dim interior of the brick building. Dust motes swirl in shafts of light piercing through cracked windows. A brass lamp covered in verdigris sits on a rough-hewn table, next to a ring of rusted iron keys. To your left, a stone staircase descends into darkness, its steps worn smooth by centuries of use. A faded tapestry on the far wall depicts dwarves mining glowing crystals, its threads crawling faintly as if stirred by an unfelt breeze. From below comes the distant sound of dripping water and… is that the clink of metal on stone? The air smells of damp earth and something metallic. A cockroach skitters over your boot as the door slams shut behind you with finality.
get lamp
Your fingers close around the brass lamp's cold surface, green oxidation flaking off as you lift it. The moment it leaves the table, the tapestry's embroidered dwarves freeze mid-swing, their crystalline gems dimming to ordinary thread. A low grinding reverberates through the floor stones as three iron-banded trapdoors swing open in the walls, revealing:
1. A chute dripping viscous black fluid that smells of rancid oil
2. A clawed gauntlet emerging slowly from the darkness, fingers twitching
3. A stone mouth chanting "Speak the binding-word, bearer of light" in Old Dwarvish
The keys clatter suddenly on the table as if shaken by an earthquake, their teeth forming brief patterns resembling Dwarvish numerals. From below, the metallic clinking grows more frantic, accompanied by a wet gurgling sound that wasn't there before. The lamp's wick spontaneously ignites with a whump, casting long shadows that make the tapestry's frozen miners appear to resume their digging.
get keys
Your hand darts toward the iron keys just as they begin rotating clockwise across the table like possessed clock hands. The instant your skin touches metal:
SKREEEEE! The clawed gauntlet from Trapdoor 2 lunges with unnatural speed, rusted fingers snapping shut where your wrist had been. You leap back, keys jangling in your grip as their teeth now show III-I-IX in glowing Dwarvish runes. The stone mouth recites "Three trials for the key-bearer" as:
1. The black fluid from Trapdoor 1 ignites into green flames
2. The gauntlet retracts and reemerges holding a spiked chain
3. Your shadow detaches from the floor and reaches for the lamp
The lamp's flame gutters violently. Through the sudden darkness comes the sound of multiple gauntlets clanking up the stone stairs below. The keys grow painfully cold in your hand as your breath fogs in air that's dropped 20 degrees.
run
THWIP! Your boots skid across stone.
The detached shadow hisses as its fingers brush the lamp's flame - "Fleeing lights the dark paths" - while the first gauntlet's clawed fingertips emerge from the stairwell, dripping viscous black fluid that sizzles on contact with stone. Your keys vibrate violently as the stone mouth begins a countdown in guttural Dwarvish: "Haul… Zant… Thra…"
xyzzy
"XYZZY!" The ancient magic word rips through reality with a crack of displaced air. Stone grinds as:
1. The green flames invert into an oil-black waterfall
2. Your shadow screams and shreds into smoke
3. The gauntlets fuse into a chrome golem now blocking the stairs
You reappear knee-deep in freezing water beneath the building's foundation, lamp flame reduced to a cobalt spark. Carved dwarven statues line the flooded tunnel, their gemstone eyes tracking you. The keys in your hand now burn with three symbols:
⚔️ A pickaxe (III) glowing blue
⛏️ A cracked gem (I) dripping black fluid
⚰️ A coffin (IX) etched in bone
From above comes the chrome golem's echoing roar. The water level rises rapidly as the statues begin chanting. Your lamp's dim light reveals a submerged archway where the III statues point, A bone coffin (IX) wedged in the ceiling, and your shadow reforming as a hooded figure with gemstone teeth.
Act swiftly - the golem's footsteps make the water vibrate.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
DeepSeek R1 makes for a dungeon master that is, uh, different. All of the OpenAI and Meta AI models are way too conservative when you play a D&D campaign with them, and everything always ends up with a happy ending. Whereas DeepSeek R1 will just decide that your entire party gets killed by mould spores living in the carpet because you didn't roll more than the square root of 45.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
homophobia, ablism I haven't posted a for a while. So here's one. Last night I dreamed I wrote a book called Silly Chilly Billy, in which Billy gets a croak in his throat 'cuz he wouldn't wear a coat, but smarter Carter wore his garters. However, the book launch was being protested because apparently the book contributed to the feminization of boys by suggesting that they might need to wear coats when it's cold outside. The book lead to all books by people with disabilities being banned, because true men aren't disabled, and so all books by the disabled are homosexual propaganda. I was then required to publicly apologize for attacking masculinity, and admit that coats are a crutch for the inferior. As people booed and threw things at me, I woke up.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@nicr9 Also, advertisers want to put everyone into similarity buckets. And that's what AI can be extremely good at, if it's using data of billions of people. It's not recommending the content you would like most. Instead, it's trying to find other people who are most similar to you, and push you the content they like. There's a subtle but important difference. As a blind person, I feel this a lot. I consume a lot of content about video games that happen to be accessible (Forza, Hearthstone, The Last of Us, etc). So big tech pushes me content about other video games people play, but those games aren't accessible. The AI has dropped me into the "video gamer" bucket and assumes I like the same kind of things other gamers do. And advertisers can now target me with generic video game content. Whereas distributed, personalized AI would just be focused on learning about you as an individual, instead of trying to decide what massive bucket you fit into.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes Also, apparently I was wrong about the CPU. according to lscpu:
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 6
Socket(s): 1
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes This is initial. Destination started off completely empty.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes However, I do know that stuff that doesn't need to read or write to the filesystem is just fine. Like, there's no lag typing into SSH. But if I try to write to a file, then there is.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes I do not. At least, not off the top of my head.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@mcourcel It sure is! An organization I used to work with had a code of conduct new members had to agree to, but it was always shortened to C O C. So occasionally I'd get to hear slack messages like "Hey, have you accepted the coc yet?"
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes The destination disc is a solid state NVME drive.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes rclone sync --interactive icloud /Family/backups:/mnt/backups