I like async but dislike await. I spend entirely too much time on everything I build trying to maximize how much I can do in parallel because I find it tremendously satisfying.

Nah, this one has a margin of error. It’s just that “take down a large percentage of all computers in the world simultaneously” is quite a bit outside of that margin for a security software.

Everyone’s like, “It’s not that impressive. It’s not general AI.” Yeah, that’s the scary part to me. A general AI could be told, “btw don’t kill humans” and it would understand those instructions and understand what a human is.

The current way of doing things is just digital guided evolution, in a nutshell. Way more likely to create the equivalent of a bacteria than the equivalent of a human. And it’s not being treated with the proper care because, after all, it’s just a language model and not general AI.

Outright bans are because government bodies are scared of nuance. You can also see this in “zero-tolerance” policies that do things like punish the victim because they were “involved” in a fight, or punish a kid who nibbles a chicken nugget into the shape of a gun.

To be fair to schools, nuance is hard. Suppose that the rule is “phones may not interrupt class.” Now, what counts as an interruption may vary between classes, between teachers, and based on what’s happening in class. A student may use it during a quiet period in the class when they’ve already completed their work, and that’s acceptable. A different student will then use their phone ten minutes later, when they’re supposed to be doing something. The second student will get in trouble, but then complain that the first student didn’t get in trouble. The parent will hear, “Brayden was using his phone and he didn’t get in trouble but the second I used mine, I got in trouble. The teacher has it out for me.”

If you’ve talked to any teachers in the past few decades, a common theme is parents siding with their kids against all logic, reason, and evidence. They’ll assume that teachers are petty goblins, just looking for an excuse to pick on their kid. And parents can be outright hostile and unreasonable. When my wife was a teacher, she received more than one actual death threat from parents because she enforced rules that did NOT have any nuance or discretion. Imagine if enforcing the rule was up to the teacher’s discretion versus an outright ban.

tl;dr I agree that a ban is silly, but I totally get why schools are doing it.

My city has both, and they’re decorated the same. I just wonder whether a really good burger place did this first and then crappy ones showed up to copy the decor and forgot to make the food good.

On the plus side for them, they can probably use Gemini to write their apology blog about how they missed the mark with that ad.

It is legitimately useful for getting started with using a new programming library or tool. Documentation is not always easy to understand or easy to search, so having an LLM generate a baseline (even if it’s got mistakes) or answer a few questions can save a lot of time.

For me, the worst part of setting up some new distro or service is when it’s done and everything works. Then it just… Sits there. Working. Usually at some task I don’t need very often. Very anticlimactic and boring. Then I have to find some other new thing to try, which is why my HTPC has been through like 4 distros in the past year.

I’m with you in some cases. Who you take money from is not the same as who you give money or support to, necessarily. I think the worry in this case is that it’s a surveillance company.

Generally when people bring up some personal detail, my immediate reaction is to assume the opposite. Especially if it begins with “as a.” For example: “as a woman,” this person is a man. “As a black person,” this is the whitest person you will ever meet. “As a 60 year old,” definitely ten.

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an ad from the OS on Android. I know some manufacturers, Samsung in particular, include ads but that’s not “Android” so much as “Samsung’s shitty skin of Android.”

The closest I’ve gotten to an ad on Pixel is a thing to review new features after updates.

It’s the downside of open source: You’re at the mercy of companies that don’t care and developers who are primarily interested in the hardware they’re using rather than the hardware you’re using.

The best experience is going to be hardware that’s built and certified for Linux. System76, Tuxedo, a bunch of other smaller names and the rare Dell or Lenovo. But that’s definitely not practical for everyone, or a good idea to convince people to buy new hardware for Linux.

It’ll be a slow transition. The more enthusiasts hop on the bandwagon, the more manufacturers and hardware vendors will care about support. The more Microsoft keeps irritating their customers, the more companies will move away. The support will come, it’s been improving for a long time.

All that said. I’d recommend CachyOS or PopOS if you get the urge to try again. I’ve tried a bunch of distributions and those seem to have the best focus on “just make consumer hardware work right out of the box.” That’s no guarantee of course, but it’s a start.

I think where points of view tend to diverge is in the definition of “harm.” There’s also some team sports at play, for sure, but I do think a big part of it is “harm.”

See, a devout Christian might say that an atheist T-shirt encourages children to turn away from God, endangering their immortal souls. If you truly believe in Christianity, can there be any greater harm?

At the same time, people who are more conservative tend to not view psychological effects as valid. If you do something that causes a person mental anguish, as opposed to damaging their body, property, or potentially their immortal soul, then it’s imaginary harm. To be totally honest, though, that’s one area I tend to be almost conservative. Psychological harm IS real harm, but I don’t think the government should be in the business of protecting people from it because as long as people have differing views there’s simply no way to protect people equally.

I think the problem is that search does not make money. Ads make money, and subscriptions make money. Convincing people to switch from Google ads to New Google ads would involve dumping tons of money into becoming popular enough to attract advertisers. Convincing people to pay for search, like Kagi is doing, is probably even harder.

SyncThing has been great for me. I tried NextCloud and OwnCloud first, granted years ago, and they were not great. So I’ve been using SyncThing at least 5 years now.

Is it easier or is it just shifting the cost? We’re talking thousands of cars needing electrification in any given city, at let’s say they get it to an average of $35k each.

Picking a random city, let’s say Cincinnati. They already have some infrastructure but it’s largely car dependent. They have 148k households, of which 44.1% have one car, 25.2% have two, 6.8% have three, and 2.4% have four. So roughly 65k + 75k + 30k + 14k = 184k cars * 35k each or minimum 6.4 billion to electrify them all.

I don’t know how much good public transit costs, but I have to imagine $6.4b can buy a fair amount of it.

I think the difference is that generative AI is allowing the spammy bullshit to outpace the anti-bullshit measures faster than before. I don’t think it’s demonization to point out that it’s a problem.

I just switched my gaming PC to Linux yesterday. Well, switch is strong, I still have Windows in case I need to go back.

It’s come a long way, though. I started using Linux desktop around 2000, and it was not a fun experience. I tried again in 2019 with a System76 laptop, and it’s been just fine. My home theater/gaming PC was the last holdout.

So far, it works great. Steam Link works, my games all seem to work, RetroArch is going strong. The only downside is Oculus support doesn’t seem to exist at all, so I might need to keep my Windows drive a bit longer just for VR.

I feel like we always do things exactly the opposite of whatever rational would be.

“These people aren’t using the land to it’s full potential so we’re justified in murdering them and taking the land.” - About the people living half naked off the land.

“You can’t just make people move, even if you compensate them and are doing it for the greater good.” - About the people who drive a pickup truck to Walmart.

I know there’s more nuance, it’s just funny to me.

I tried it, then uninstalled pretty quickly. If I say, “Play music” then 10% of the time it would play music, and the other 90% it would tell me it can’t. Same with many other assistant commands like controlling lights.

What even is the option here? When Google got rid of adding things to lists, I started my official transition away from them by moving to Proton, self hosting more stuff, etc. But for a voice assistant it seems like open source just isn’t there yet, it doesn’t have the hardware, and my only remaining option is to switch to Amazon (no.) Or Apple.