Some thoughts

We hiked up our local hill yesterday after the summer heat had cleared, and we got some nice sunset colours.

Most pictures ended up being the typical sunset shots, because that stuff seems to be irresistible, but I got some that are different; sunset merely illuminating the things and giving them a 3d glow. I ended up liking those the most.

Trump, being himself, let it slip that the West has for the most part no more than 4 weeks of oil reserves, which is unsurprising since they’ve been using them up foolishly in order to prevent the oil prices from going up too much, which would reflect poorly on the popularity of the politicians and their foolish wars. Since the current “agreement” between Iran and the USA is of such flimsy nature that the sides can’t even agree enough to publish the same version of what’s supposedly being agreed upon, there’s not much chance of any peace there taking root, at least until Israel gets its way, nukes Iran and gets wiped off the map in return.

I noticed one thing changing in my attitude towards the Apple ecosystem, and Apple Silicon in particular. I no longer see them as an experiment, a thing I’m testing to see if it’s long term viable, while maintaining a backup Intel based system that could take over in case it all fizzles out. It became my primary system, while everything else is essentially obsolete. I know exactly how that came to be. When I was writing the last book, and especially when I was proofreading it, I pretty much exhausted myself to the point of almost passing out, and I noticed that I removed that margin that I always maintain – if the computer breaks, dies, crashes or fubars the data, I am usually always ready to do something. This time, I was so tired that I relied on the computers – the 15″ M4 Air, and the Studio M2 Max – to do everything perfectly because I was simply too tired to do anything about it. And they did – they were both incredibly fast, reliable and good, and nothing went wrong in any way. One would think that after all the decades of IT progress that would be expected and unsurprising, but it isn’t. My Windows desktop, the Ryzen machine, is unreliable to the point of randomly bluescreening whenever I really push it. It probably means that the CPU is damaged and can’t handle the thermal load, or something; but since a machine bluescreening under load means loss of data, I simply stopped using it for anything other than games. I had to push the machines when I was finishing the book – not care how many things I left open, not care how big images I imported into Photoshop for the covers, not care how many layers I had; I just needed to get the job done, and I did the covers after proofreading for multiple days in a row, and had the machine crashed during that, I’d probably throw it out the window and make it a lawn ornament. But it didn’t crash. It didn’t slow down, it didn’t glitch, didn’t do any of the stupid shit I came to expect from both Windows and Linux, and I could rely on both the OS and the hardware to pull me through when I was half-conscious from work. As a result, something changed in my attitude; I now treat Apple Silicon machines as serious stuff I rely on, and I treat everything else as toys. I bought another laptop, the 13″ M5 Air, the 16/512GB model. It’s not that the 15″ did anything wrong; to the contrary, it’s the best laptop I ever had. I wrote almost the entire book on it, and it did everything flawlessly. It’s just that I like having 13″ laptops for some things, and all my other 13″ machines are either old and expected to fail sooner rather than later, or they are much, much worse than Apple Silicon in almost every way. For some things, such as making the covers or editing photos, I use the Studio with a 43″ screen. For some things I use the 15″ laptop, and for some things I use the small one. I think it’s similar to how guitar players have multiple guitars they use for playing different things.

Over the years, I experimented with different kinds of laptops, and I discovered that a very powerful desktop replacement machine is the least useful for me, because I rarely need that kind of power on a laptop. I need it where I need the big screen for editing pictures, and that’s a desktop. I need a laptop to have an excellent keyboard, touchpad, screen and battery, and to be fast enough for all the things I run on a laptop. This ends up being everything other than photo editing, so basically I have photo editing machines and “everything else” machines. This explains why I prefer the Macbook Air to the Pro – the pro models have active cooling and more power, but they are thicker, heavier and more expensive for the virtue of being great for the things I don’t actually use the laptop for. As a result, I managed to “cook” the 15″ Air only twice, and both cases took place in a hotel when I was importing a batch of 350 or so 61MP raw files into Lightroom. To its credit, it actually managed to hold its own and be as fast as my Studio for the first 100 or so pictures, but then it throttled itself to less than half its nominal speed and it was pegged at 100°C. Also to its credit, it managed to actually import everything just fine, and I proceeded to edit everything on the hot laptop and functionally speaking, I got the job done. Would I like doing it regularly, no. But also, would I like buying a 5000 EUR machine that is better at something I do twice a year, while also being so much bulkier and less practical for everything else I actually use it for? Hard pass.

On the other hand, the Studio is a complete opposite. The Air has incredible speed and power, until it hits the thermal limit. The Studio M2 Max is actually somewhat weaker in that range. However, it never hits the thermal limit. It can keep going at 100% load, for hours, days, weeks or years, and it will never give a single fuck. The machine is under-specced for my new 61MP cameras because I bought it for processing 24MP files, so things that used to run instantaneously now take time. The thing is, I don’t necessarily care. I have it import the files while I take a shower, it gets stuff done, and I never have to think about overheating it, stressing it by having it work for too long on 100%, or anything like that. It’s like a rock crushing machine that just crushes rocks for years and doesn’t give a fuck. Also, unlike other powerful machines, it is always completely silent. And unlike my equally powerful Ryzen machine, it never bluescreens.

No wonder Apple ate everybody’s lunch. It’s the thing you need when you’re done with everybody else’s shit and you just need to rely on things to do their job because it’s important, and you don’t have the patience for drivers acting up or the OS update locking up the machine just when you need it, or something crashing and taking your files with it. When you need a rock crusher that works 24/7, and you really depend on it doing the job, maybe it’s not the time for solutions that require you to reserve a part of your mental capacity for fixing the mess after the machine inevitably shits itself.

So yeah.

Do I actually need a zillion computers? Does Mike Oldfield actually need a zillion guitars? Yes, in fact. It’s weird how that works, but this is no place for minimalism.

The five year cycle

The fact that every piece of IT gear needs to be replaced every five years is something I find increasingly annoying. It’s as if I’m on a five-year subscription.

Recently, Biljana and I had to replace phones – not only because the battery was on its last legs, but also because the 12th-gen iPhones have weak batteries by default and it was kind of a problem since we bought them, so merely changing the battery wouldn’t do anything useful. Also, the new operating system is designed to strain the battery more. Also, the radio transceiver (wifi/bluetooth) is slow and we had issues connecting to it via hotspot mode. It all kind of accumulated to the point where we had to do something about it.

Also, the first-gen Apple Silicon gear that we bought in 2021 is now five years old. My M1 iPad pro has a cracked screen in the corner, because I put it on something unstable when I was working, and it fell corner first on the concrete floor. Yeah, not great. However, that was when it was less than a year old, and I refused to do anything about it, seeing it as a punishment for not paying attention, so it’s still cracked. Also, the touchscreen is acting up lately, and there’s yellowing in the edges of the amoled screen – 2-3 cm. I’d replace if it were important, but I use it as a secondary device, for reading books, playing silly mobile games and occasionally surfing the web and taking handwritten notes. The M1 air is also banged up – I destroyed the tab key, probably by pressing it too violently when something wasn’t working, and I had to remap tab to caps lock in software. Also, the battery started showing signs of age in the new OS, which is probably running all kinds of useless garbage in the background, but I solved that by turning on the low power mode. This helped the battery life significantly, and I don’t see any bad side effects. The machine has only 8GB of RAM, which was always its weak point, and it gets worse as they fill the OS with all kinds of slop. I bought the 15″ M4 air a year ago so it’s been “replaced”, but the thing is, I never throw away the “replaced” gear, at least until it’s worn out and broken to the point of being completely useless. I just repurpose it for some secondary task. The M1 air is in the bedroom, and I use it for checking the mail and text messages in the morning, and for writing things down when I have ideas while in bed. It’s actually useful. People use phones for that, but I find phones almost completely useless, since they don’t have a keyboard, and if I have ideas, I need to write them down quickly, and my patience for technological innovations that limit me is non-existent. To me, computer is something with a keyboard and an OS that’s designed for switching between applications quickly and getting things done. It’s interesting how both the M1 tablet and the M1 laptop are essentially the same computer, but the lack of a keyboard on the tablet makes it significantly less useful to me.

I also noticed that the laptop form factor matters a lot. The 13-14″ laptops fit in my lap better, leading to a better hand position which makes typing easier. The 15-16″ models on the other hand are much better when I have to do anything photography-related, or view some web sites where javascript misbehaves on smaller screens. Yes, unfortunately that’s a thing. I have all sorts of laptops, mostly old and obsolete, and one would ask why do I have that many. The answer is, I often have to do things quickly, for instance unload a complex article from my head. I need to have a computer available the second I have to do that, and I don’t have time for messing around. Sometimes, I need two computers, side by side, because I’m running chat on one screen, writing text on the other, and the Mac OS seamlessly connects them both into a single working unit. Being able to do things more effectively because the computers actually help is very beneficial. But it’s sometimes not even that – sometimes, I need a cheap/obsolete/easily repairable laptop when I go out and sit under a pine tree that can drip resin on the keyboard or the screen. That’s what the T14 gen1 Thinkpad is for. If something messes it up, screens and keyboards are cheaply available on ebay and I can install them myself. With a Macbook, it would be a total loss of an expensive device. So, a cheap Thinkpad gives me a peace of mind when I want to have the laptop outside because I want to finish some line of thought without being always at home. Also, the Thinkpad has the advantage of not feeling like I’m on a 5 year lease cycle – the battery is cheap and easy to replace. The SSD is easy to replace. The RAM is socketed and easy to replace. The keyboard, screen and touchpad are easy to replace. All parts can be sourced from ebay. The machine is significantly less pleasant to use when I’m pouring thoughts into the computer compared to the Macbooks, but it feels like it’s going to last forever and it’s repairable.

But here’s the thing: yes, the Apple stuff is on a 5-year renewal cycle, but after 5 years the technology usually advances enough for me to actually consider upgrading not just because the old device is on its last legs, but also because you do actually get something for the money. The iPhone 17 is significantly faster and battery lasts for multiple days, which is a serious upgrade from iPhone 12. The new generation of laptops is amazing, but the M1 Air is also good enough that the only real reason for replacing it would be the accumulation of wear and the lack of RAM. The tablets, on the other hand, all do the same thing and I’d replace that one only when it literally stops working, because otherwise it would feel like a terrible waste of money. Basically, my iPad pro M1 is fast and good, it does everything well; it’s just somewhat broken and the battery is worn out, so it won’t be a replacement because technology got better, it would be replacement because of the unfortunate 5-year cycle.

I feel like complaining about it and saying that technology should last longer than that, but honestly, it doesn’t actually come up as a problem as often as one would think, because I tend to use my devices hard, and my keyboards and mice tend to look like they went through a war after five years. Monitors accumulate quite a bit of working hours too. The SSD drives accumulate wear. Sure, the LiIon batteries artificially limit the life cycle, but I had several situations where I replaced the battery, trying to prolong the life of a phone or a laptop, but I had to replace the device anyway because of other reasons – either wear or the fact that new computers got much faster.

So, what am I saying here? Mostly complaining because it’s been five years since 2021 when I bought most of the gear, and replacements cost money. I hate spending money on gear, but I like having new gear. 🙂

Compared to computers, photography is much more reasonable. I still have lenses from the 1980s and 1990s. I have all the lenses I bought with the Canon 5d in 2006, except the one I sold. They all work on the new gear just fine. The lenses I bought recently, the new and optically superb stuff, are also expected to last forever. My camera replacement cycle is 9-10 years, and that’s because of technology development, not stuff breaking. Cameras have removable batteries and storage, so when that wears out I just buy new batteries and memory cards, not the camera. It’s all modular, quite repairable, and very durable, and I think it’s the example of how things can be done.

Fejka

I’ve been wondering why LLM fake-AI systems manage to be so effective, since they are essentially glorified autocomplete; basically, they are a neural network based probability engine that determines what’s the most likely next word in a sentence.

Maybe because most humans are a neural-network based probability engine that’s also very good at figuring out the next thing that’s expected for them to say. And then this crossed my mind:

FEJKA artificial potted plants don’t require a green thumb. Perfect when you have better things to do than water plants and pick up dead leaves. You’ll have everyone fooled because they look so lifelike.”

That’s what most people are. They are a fejka. LLM systems merely stumbled upon this fact by accident. A fake artificial intelligence can learn to finish sentences, paragraphs and entire articles in passable ways because that’s what fake human intelligence does – finish sentences in a “correct” way in order to avoid ridicule and punishment. Everybody knows what to say and all their conversations are formulaic and predictable to the point where someone learned how to make a computer system that does the same thing.

It’s not just text. People learn how to take photographs in a formulaic way that gets them acclaim and avoids ridicule. They learn how to have spiritual experiences that will get them acclaim and avoid ridicule, because they are of the exact same kind as everybody else’s, which is what created the idea of religions having the same origin and goal and it’s all the same thing. It’s because everybody has been copying homework from others. They are all fejka plastic potted plants. Looks like the real thing, but even better, because you don’t have to water it.

Now that I think about it more, human brain seems to be very good at doing the human autocomplete thing on autopilot when there’s no soul in the driver’s seat. The corollary is that spiritual awakening is the point where a soul wakes up in the body and actually starts perceiving things, paying attention and controlling actions – “oh fuck, I’m driving a car”. That’s why actual souls can be perceived as weird compared to a fejka NPC – a fejka knows what it has to say next. An actual soul has to figure it out, and is likely to say the “wrong thing”.

Dissatisfaction

I’ve been thinking about something recently, how “better” isn’t really a simple metric; as mathematicians would say, it isn’t a scalar, where 5 is bigger than 2. For instance, I have a 50mm f/1.8 lens that I like a lot because it’s small and light and it’s something I can take for a walk when I have no expectations to get usable pictures, but it still has good minimum focusing distance, excellent sharpness and so on. It has issues – focusing motor is loud and slow, and it has lots of chromatic aberrations wide open on contrasty areas. Also, it doesn’t have a MF/AF switch to turn AF off quickly when it starts struggling. So, I thought about upgrading it, getting a better 50mm lens.

That’s where we encounter a problem, you see, because optically speaking nothing is that much better. If a lens is ergonomically better, it’s also bigger and heavier, not to say much more expensive, and that removes most of the reasons why I like a 50mm. So, I could get a 50mm lens that’s slightly faster, has better focusing and more mechanical switches and controls on the lens itself, but is half a kilo heavier and costs a really significant chunk of money, and let’s say I bought it. Would I carry that to a walk when I want to carry the lightest possible camera? No, of course; I’d still take the 50mm f/1.8, because it’s light and small, it’s sharp enough, versatile enough, and looks unassuming. I can get a 50mm f/2.5 G, or a similar thing from Sigma, which has better controls and it’s still small and light, but I’m actually losing aperture and therefore photographic versatility. So, basically, something that’s technically not the best lens is actually exceedingly hard to upgrade, because gains and losses don’t come in simple packages; essentially, “better” is not a simple scalar.

This creates a silly situation where my cheapest lens is apparently here to stay because it almost perfectly fits the role I have for it. It needs to be cheap, light, small and good. It’s not something I use for stuff where I need absolute image quality; I just need it to be very good, and still small enough that I still decide to take it when I go out and there doesn’t seem to be much to take pictures of. It also needs to be versatile because I have no plan and no idea what I’ll see, if anything. I want something that’s better than the iPhone, and not much more hassle to carry around. I could get some small compact camera, which is another thing to charge batteries for and with different menus I have to learn, or I could just take my old Sony, which is as small and light as a micro four thirds camera, and put the light 50mm lens on it. The image quality of that setup is honestly stellar. Versatility, with its close focusing distance and aperture, is also pretty amazing. It’s just that it focuses like shit and has no AF/MF switch on the lens, and has strong CA when I shoot into the light, which I tend to do. Slightly annoying, as flaws go, but they are soon forgotten when I open the images in Lightroom.

I already had situations where something like that would annoy me, and then I would “upgrade” to something that solved one problem by introducing five bigger ones; for instance, I upgraded the old 13” Macbook Air to a 15” Macbook Pro somewhere in 2015/2016. It was faster, had more power and memory, had much better screen, but it was bigger and heavier, and actually less usable for writing than the old Air. I actually had to get a second ultralight laptop for that, the Asus Zenbook, because the “better” machine was so much “better” that it was less functional for the main task I actually used it for. I also “upgraded” from a Mondeo to a huge Audi A6 estate once; bigger is better, right, and also the kids were small so I wanted a bigger car to carry their stuff. I got rid of that car as soon as it was practical and got something smaller and more suitable. Also, a bigger house is better until it’s so big it becomes a hassle to maintain and you actually spend time looking for family members around the place because you don’t know where they are.

If your shoes are too small, bigger is better, until they become too big, which is when bigger is worse. When you drive a car that’s a bit too small, bigger is better until you feel like you’re driving a bus.

Recently Biljana and I were buying new laptops; she got a 16” Macbook Pro, and I thought about just getting one of those for myself, and then I remembered how that ended the last time I “upgraded”, and said “fuck no”. What I got for myself is the 15” Macbook Air; I just loaded it with enough RAM and that was it. Why did I get a “worse” computer for myself? I actually didn’t, I got a better computer for what I need it for, and I got her the better computer for what she needs it for. It’s like multiplying two matrices, one of requirements and one of actual hardware specs; what you use it for, how you use it, what matters, and then multiply this with actual hardware properties of mass, size and performance.

It’s not just about equipment. Most things in life require balance, where you think you need more of something until you see what it actually means. All those ideologies that feed on resentment are a good example. Communism wanted “more equality”, and produced universal misery. Feminism wanted power for women, and broke civilization to the point where it would now be easier to burn it all down than to fix it. Inclusivity sounds great until you understand that it destroys criteria.

You see flaws and you think something has to change. Then you change it and see it’s actually worse.

Satan seems to have started this resentment thing first – oh, it’s not right that some souls are so incredibly large while the others like himself are pipsqueaks. Something should be done to make everybody equal. So he made a world that limits everybody to the same playing ground, and that obviously worked great for eliminating inequality. Oh wait…

The answer to his “Some souls are so much larger than everybody else” should have been “Good; that means we have someone to admire and strive towards.”

Women’s answer to “We live in a patriarchy” should have been “Great, we love powerful men.”

The problem with resentment is that it’s a problem that presents itself as a solution. It’s not. You can point at a laptop and say “oh, it’s so small”, as if that’s a problem, and the right answer is “of course it’s small, that’s the point”. The answer to arguments that try to foment dissatisfaction is to think whether something is actually problem, or a set of features you actually prefer. Everything comes with drawbacks. You think you could always use a few inches more of penis size, but your wife might say “please no”. She might think she could do with bigger boobs, until they start jiggling around while she’s running or exercising, at which point she’ll start complaining about that. We seem to be incredibly sensitive to dissatisfaction and inclined to think change must be an improvement, but in reality, it seems that the only thing we actually need to change in most cases is perspective.

Misc thoughts

Recently we bought a coffee machine, after postponing it for 7 years or so, and Biljana looked up all kinds of coffee, and of course she went down one of those rabbit holes on the Internet, with scientific research of health benefits of all kinds of coffee, and the only kind that had no demonstrable benefits, but increased probability of some nasty degenerative eye disease in old age, was instant coffee.

My comment: “And of course that’s what we’ve been drinking for the last 20 years.” 🙂

I guess the lesson is that sometimes you shouldn’t postpone buying the coffee machine.

On a different note, the iPhone 17 just came out and there’s all kinds of talk about how its camera is great. Yeah, like the last seven or so models of iPhone, which tempt you to not to carry your proper camera around because you always have the iPhone with you, and as a result, years later all your pictures are taken with the iPhone and they are all full of digital and optical artefacts and unprintable to anything comparable to what a real camera would do. Also, a current iPhone costs around 1500 EUR. Do you even realise what a great camera and lens combo you can get for this amount of money? That’s a Canon RP with a RF 35mm f/1.8 lens. And in two to four years, you’ll do that again, just flush 1500 EUR down the drain for no good reason. Smartphones are such an incredible waste of money, because they give you absolutely no added value over the older model. It’s like a subscription service to being an idiot. Unfortunately, you actually need to have one today. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a new one.

Today I finished installing the new glassy-looking OS on all my Apple devices. It’s not that I hate glassy look in general; Vista was actually quite nice and looked sophisticated. This, however, looks like something that was hastily patched up by people with no taste, and sometimes it actually reduces functionality. That’s the problem with “progress” for the sake of just fucking with things that work well so that you can tell people you did something new, because it’s expected that you do. How about designing a window manager that knows how to snap windows properly, or a file manager that isn’t dog shit? Something that would actually serve some useful purpose? No?

I heard some professional photographer talking how bokeh is bullshit invented by lens manufacturers so that people wouldn’t mind buying expensive lenses that create images that are mostly blurry. It just goes to show that being a professional just means that’s how you earn most of your money. It doesn’t mean that you know what you’re talking about, or that you’re good at what you do. You just know how to charge for it.

The blurry part cost a lot of money.

Sure, it makes sense to say that picture is about the sharp part. However, the not sharp part is the package that presents it. Flowers on a table in the restaurant aren’t the point of lunch, because you don’t eat them, but they are a nice thing to see.

There are several parameters that define usability of a lens, the way I see it. It’s how sharp can it get things that are in focus, how close it can focus, how much can you open the aperture to both gather light and vary the depth of field, what’s the focal length/range, does it introduce optical mess into the image (CA, flare etc.) and how convenient/practical is it to work with. The ability to blur out the background in ways that will look nice might not be important if you shoot only landscapes in ways that make everything sharp, or if you shoot portraits in a studio in front of a uniform background, then bokeh rendering doesn’t matter. If that’s all you do, great, you’ll save lots of money on lenses that are designed to render good bokeh. Good for you.

Another thing crossed my mind, regarding the last article. Someone is asking themselves why God allowed this trap to be created as a test for us, that it’s not right to subject us to such a traumatic and potentially fatal test. I’m rolling my eyes right now, because God didn’t ask us to do anything he, himself wasn’t willing to do, either male or female. Remember the guy called Jesus? Born into a carpenter’s family in a barn because they had no room in the taverns and his family wasn’t important. Taught things that irrevocably altered the Western civilization and got crucified for it, which is one of the nastiest ways to die. Then rose from the dead to show that death is not the end, and afterlife isn’t some vague shadow world.

Or Krishna and his girls? Oh, he had a super easy life, being born in a jail cell where his evil uncle imprisoned his parents because of a prophecy, and they smuggled him out and gave him to some peasants to raise, so he grew up as a shepherd instead of a prince. Also, everybody kept trying to kill him, and then his best friend and his family got exiled into the jungle, which ended up in a bloody mess. It’s all told like a nice story in the books, but think about how you’d have handled half of that stuff.

Not only was God here multiple times as male and female, but s/he also doesn’t actually pick fancy and rosy incarnations. Some are, just to show that s/he doesn’t get distracted by material wealth and power. Some are absolute shit, like that of Jesus, and still major world-altering scripture is written about how well he did. I won’t even get into the level of horror I had to deal with, or the stuff my girls had to deal with. That never stopped people from thinking we had it so easy compared to them, who had it so hard. God’s incarnations always look so easy and effortless – because God is so much more transcendental, holy and pure than you are. God doesn’t wallow in mud because there’s no mud in his path, but because he just doesn’t feel like wallowing in it. God doesn’t rise above temptation because s/he wasn’t subjected to it, but because s/he is holy. (I’m writing God as dual gender because it’s an equation with two solutions). You think you have it hard, but it’s not true. Satan used the absolutely worst, cruellest and filthiest tricks to deceive Divine incarnations. I think he was probably afraid he’d get killed immediately if he tried that shit on someone weaker, but he really took off his gloves with God, thinking God can take it. I don’t even wish to talk about that stuff, it’s that nasty. And yet, God did so well you think s/he had it easy. Sure s/he did; Sati for instance willingly entered a pyre and burned herself to death rather than listen to her sinful father slander Shiva. Biljana’s childhood was the siege of Vukovar, being shredded by tank grenade shrapnels, evacuated from the basement of the Vukovar hospital by the Serb war criminals who executed her uncle and imprisoned her father in a concentration camp, and she then had to live in exile, only to be told today how easy she’s having it, by some fucking asshole entangled in his self-inflicted worldly drama, who thinks he’s having it hard. Romana also spent her childhood in exile listening to spoiled teenage girls crying about their new shoes getting rained on while she was thinking whether her father, defending Usora in a ditch with a shotgun against Serbian tanks, will survive or get killed like the people in the neighbouring village did. Yeah, God had it so easy, you have it so hard, go cry me a river so that I can piss into the river of your tears, you treacherous bastards. You forget God when you’re doing well, and you forget God when you’re not doing well. Meanwhile, Rukmini and Jesus never forgot God, regardless of how they were doing, imprisoned or crucified or laughing, which is why people pray to them, and nobody gives a shit about you.

No, you’re not having it hard, God is having it hard having to listen to your crap.