Blog

First post

2025-08-09

Life

Hey, so this is my first blog article. So, about my life so far. It is currently the summer holdiays in the UK, I have lots of work to do. I have recently finished A level computer science, so I should get the results on thursday, I'm really hoping for an A*, but I'm not so sure. Life is going really well at the moment, things are looking up as I get more freedom. I really want to pull away from using youtube, but I'm not sure how to do it without losing a lot of the creators I like to watch, I'm thinking I should try and make myself use FreeTube, but it's not as smooth as the website.
I have an EPQ I've started recently, studying quantum computers and how it's going to change cryptography in the next 10 years, so for that I'm learning linear algebra online in order to understand the papers on the algorithms, so I can make my own judgements with the timescales of the projects from the companies. It's going well, I'm finding it difficult to wrap my head around these new concepts with vectors and matrices, but I'm getting there. Then I can do research on how it applies to quantum computing and the notation with that. Next on the plan is play with it a bit, understand for myself how it works, program it and document it all. Then I can gather differing points of view from experts and other scientists, in order to flesh out my research and understand why they say what they say. That's about it for EPQ work.
In other news, I am trying to learn to drive, I get driving lessons every week, that's going well, I managed to drive home. I now need to study the 'Highway code' in order to pass my theory test, which I recently managed to book, that's alright, I have to speedrun it a bit, because I set the date quite close to now, but I'll be fine it's only £23. That will be great for my freedom. I've got flash cards for memorising what each sign means, and some books of the highway code, there's an app I got for it as well with pass guarantee if I do everything, they set the bar quite high though understandably, so it gives me quite the incentive to try everything, do as many questions as possible and get it all right.
Those are the main things I need to concentrate on, obviously I need to revise my physics and maths, but that's not urgent. Other small things is that I have played a little clone hero on the side, and began HRT after long last which is exciting, but I have small concerns that the dose could be a little low, but only small. It may be absolutely fine, and it probably is, but idk.

Opinions

So what's going on which is important to me?
The online safety act is not good, the censorship of the internet is not something to be taken lightly at all. Giving ID over is the opposite of the spirit of the internet and even if it's safe and secure, the lack of anonymity changes things, it changes the tone, people will be more afraid to speak out, because they know who you are. Even then, who's to say they don't call something totally normal "mature content", like LGBTQ+ content on websites, preventing children from discovering who they are because the government don't like LGBTQ+ people. If they did this, which is very possible, it would be catastrophic for the mental helth of these young queer people. But it's not about queer people, it's about all people. If they decided a religion wasn't valid, just mark it as mature and tell the websites to put a barrier behind it. It's the kind of soft censorship which you get the choice to either give away your privacy or have a censored web. None of them are good options. In conclusion, bad, slippery slope, etc. etc.
So, on the topic of generative AI. It's alright****. So asterisk number one. It's got to be used responsibly, vibe coding important projects especially ones that people rely on and security-critical ones, should not be allowed. It introduces bugs which may be invisible to someone who only vibe codes, which may leave security vulnerablities and other bad behaviour, I prefer where people actually understand the code they write, why they write it, and how to alter it. Especially with things like the AI linking libraries that do not exist. But it's not just about code to be responsible. It's also the deception with it. I've seen way too many articles online which are quite obviously AI, with many factual problems, clogging up the internet with rubbish. Even reviews, like amazon reviews what have you, there are so many AI reviews which just deceive and waste time of the people buying whatever product. Second asterisk is the environment, not much to say, huge electricity usage and water usage = not good. The only way to solve this is by going for cleaner energy sources and more efficient vehicles. Possibly a mandate for companies to release water clean, I don't know, just do better. Third asterisk is "Art". IT IS NOT ART. It is an image. An image designed to imitate art. Art only works when there's a human behind it, I believe AI can be used as part of the process, but telling AI to spit out an anime girl is not art. Like South Park's deepfake of orange man is hilarious, sure it used AI, but was there meaning? Totally. Did it have context? Absolutely. That was art. Fourth and final asterisk is copyright. I don't think copyright is great; it's not the best. It lasts way too long and is horribly enforced on the internet. But it's still law. Companies like facebook and openai can't just pirate everything possible and get literally zero problems back from that. If that was legal. All piracy is legal. If that was illegal, do something. Anything. WTF you doing USA.

Ending

That wraps things up. I'll try posing once a month. This was great fun. I hope you, if anyone actually reads this shit, had a good read. Goodnight Tri-State area.
Maddie