Thad 's BestNetTech Comments

Latest Comments (5129)

• On the post: When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop

  

  Thad ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2025 @ 06:46pm

  Oh hey, one more for now: Microsoft Scales Back AI Goals Because Almost Nobody Is Using Copilot

• On the post: FCC Boss Brendan Carr Showcases How He’s A Shameless Liar And Opportunist In Testimony Before Congress

  

  Thad ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2025 @ 11:13am

  Well, that'll make for some good evidence in court if he decides to go after Disney again.

• On the post: When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop

  

  Thad ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2025 @ 10:57am

  The infuriating thing is that generative AI does have some practical uses (not fancy autocomplete or shitty image generation) and when the bubble bursts nobody's going to distinguish between the valuable uses and the stupid ones, nobody's going to want to invest in anything ML-shaped.

• On the post: When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop

  

  Thad ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2025 @ 10:53am

  Here's a guide from last month that names a few: How to Disable All the AI Features in Firefox Web Browser More significantly, their new CEO announced plans to turn Firefox into an "AI browser" yesterday. Anyway yeah I've already switched my main devices to Waterfox, Librewolf, or Fennec, but I'm looking into switching over the remaining devices that I haven't.

• On the post: When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop

  

  Thad ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2025 @ 10:49am

  Firefox is in a separate category because it's not a widely-used product like Windows or Google. Firefox's problem isn't that it's trying to justify AI investment by forcing it on existing customers. Firefox's problem is that management thinks its userbase is small because it doesn't imitate Chrome hard enough, instead of understanding that being different from Chrome is the only reason it has any userbase at all.

• On the post: When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop

  

  Thad ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2025 @ 07:05am

  Hell, Gemini too for that matter. Two of your three examples are cases where companies with a large existing userbase have added AI to their products, turned on by default. That's not evidence that people want genAI, dude. It's evidence that the only way Big Tech can get most people to use it is to force them to.

• On the post: When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop

  

  Thad ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2025 @ 06:53am

  That’s very clearly not true. Tons of people use [...] CoPilot

  Whether they want to or not.

• On the post: When People Realize How Good The Latest Chinese Open Source Models Are (And Free), The GenAI Bubble Could Finally Pop

  

  Thad ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2025 @ 02:06pm

  Also, the problem isn't that AI costs too much, it's that people fucking don't want it.

• On the post: ‘Let It Die: Inferno’ Is A Very Interesting Trial Balloon For AI Use In Video Games

  

  Thad ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2025 @ 01:17pm

  Eh. Doomers are real, but Tim's pulling some rhetorical sleight-of-hand here and lumping legitimate concerns about workers being replaced by AI with TESCREAL fantasies. And then acknowledging a couple of paragraphs later that yeah okay some workers are going to be replaced with AI.

• On the post: ‘Let It Die: Inferno’ Is A Very Interesting Trial Balloon For AI Use In Video Games

  

  Thad ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2025 @ 10:18am

  “AI-controlled opponents” have existed since the days of Street Fighter II, if not further back than even that.

  I'd describe the algorithms that determine the ghosts' behavior in Pac-Man as AI. Hell, electronic chess sets are a primitive form of AI. Similarly, I've seen people talk about using genAI to generate maps, and that's another example of something we've been doing for generations with much more efficient algorithms. Procedurally-generated layouts are not a new concept! That's what the entire Roguelike genre is, and has been for 45 years!

• On the post: Nobody (Including Advertisers) Cared About Bari Weiss’ New CBS ‘Town Hall’

  

  Thad ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2025 @ 10:11am

  The people who knew who Charlie Kirk was, regardless of their political affiliation, also knew he wasn’t deserving of being lionized as “the current-day MLK” or whatever.

  Well, not Ezra Klein.

  The legacy of Charlie Kirk is a lot like that of Rush Limbaugh, in a way. Both men spewed hate every chance they could. Both men influenced conservative thought to some degree. And both men’s post-death cultural legacies amounted to someone farting in a bathroom, in that nothing they did in their lives mattered to culture in general and was largely forgotten about after all the obituaries were done and over with.

  I never hear anybody talk about Limbaugh anymore, but I'd say his legacy is pretty secure. It's a deeply shitty legacy, but a significant one. The reason he was so insignificant by the end is that he spawned so many imitators -- every far-right asshole on AM radio or cable TV is following the trail he blazed.

• On the post: Nobody (Including Advertisers) Cared About Bari Weiss’ New CBS ‘Town Hall’

  

  Thad ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2025 @ 10:07am

  Life there will be hard for him, he will have to do manual work like growing his own food.

  Yes, that's the part of going to live on Mars that he's being unrealistic about.

• On the post: Nobody (Including Advertisers) Cared About Bari Weiss’ New CBS ‘Town Hall’

  

  Thad ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2025 @ 09:07am

  It makes sense when you view it as MAGA's attempt at a Reichstag Fire or 9/11 moment. They were trying to exploit a tragedy to silence their enemies and bulldoze civil rights. They miscalculated, because (1) most people had no fucking idea who Charlie Kirk was and (2) people like Charlie Kirk have spent the past 25 years conditioning Americans to accept shootings as a normal fact of life and forget about them after a couple of days.

• On the post: The Real Reason For Boat Strike ‘Double Taps’ Is Preventing Survivors From Challenging Extrajudicial Killings In Court

  

  Thad ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2025 @ 09:16pm

  Checks and balances rely on the other two branches of government not abdicating all their power to the executive.

• On the post: Truly Unhinged: Trump Suggests Rob Reiner Had It Coming For Criticizing Him

  

  Thad ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2025 @ 09:13pm

  Oh, okay, I guess it's not happening because you can sort of vaguely gesture toward two times that it didn't. My mistake.

• On the post: ‘Let It Die: Inferno’ Is A Very Interesting Trial Balloon For AI Use In Video Games

  

  Thad ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2025 @ 09:05pm

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, opinions about AI were highly polarized, stratified opinions also existed, "doomers" believed that AI was so powerful that it was a threat to all of our jobs, certainly there would be some job loss associated with the use of AI as a tool, Supertrick has been transparent about the use of AI in Let It Die: Inferno, their explanations were not all that good, the public’s reaction is going to be very, very interesting, the game's overall reception isn’t particularly helpful, scanning those reviews, there doesn’t seem to be a ton in there about AI usage—so perhaps the backlash has moved on to the game just not being very good.

• On the post: Truly Unhinged: Trump Suggests Rob Reiner Had It Coming For Criticizing Him

  

  Thad ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2025 @ 02:58pm

  And much of the media is just letting it slide by, “reporting the facts” of what Trump said, rather than just how unhinged it is

  I used to say the news media were stenographers. Now I wish they were stenographers. At least stenographers would accurately report Trump's words. Our news media are reputation managers: they sanewash Trump's incoherence and cruelty to make them sound rational and respectable.

• On the post: The Real Reason For Boat Strike ‘Double Taps’ Is Preventing Survivors From Challenging Extrajudicial Killings In Court

  

  Thad ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2025 @ 11:20am

  Totally unrelated, I'm sure: Exclusive: US threatens new ICC sanctions unless court pledges not to prosecute Trump

• On the post: Get Ready To Enter A New Decade With The Next Public Domain Game Jam: Gaming Like It’s 1930!

  

  Thad ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2025 @ 08:40pm

  It can be done. Fagin the Jew is Will Eisner addressing his own use of anti-Black stereotypes by comparing it to hurtful literary stereotypes about his own people. But, pointedly, his work was by analogy -- he didn't feel it was his place to talk about the Black experience, but he knew there were similarities to his experiences as a Jew and he was more comfortable examining that history. He was also an incredibly talented and respected cartoonist and storyteller with big ideas and the skill to execute them, so there's that. And that's an example of someone taking an earnest approach. If you're trying to be funny or satirical, that's a bigger challenge. I don't buy the line that you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today, but the key thing is that Mel Brooks would have never been able to make it then if he hadn't had Richard Pryor's name on it as a co-writer. There's still cutting satire about anti-Black racism, whether that's Aaron McGruder, Boots Riley, or Jordan Peele, but there's a pretty big difference between those guys making jokes about racism and a white guy doing it. You make a good point that it's unfair for white guys to expect POC to shoulder the burden of talking about racism. But on the other hand, Chris Rock can make jokes about racism that I can't. Or at least really, really shouldn't.

• On the post: Trump Pretends To Block State AI Laws; Media Pretends That’s Legal

  

  Thad ( profile ), 13 Dec, 2025 @ 09:21pm

  * its

Next >>