Dave

Just because gods and heaven and hell aren’t real, it doesn’t mean that nothing is real. Kindness is real. Compassion is real. Understanding is real. That tingly feeling you get when you do something good for someone else is real. It may have been the product of countless years of evolution rather than divine whim, but it’s still real.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have another 60 or 70 years of awareness ahead of you. Find meaning by seeking out that tingly feeling as much as you can :)

I’m starting to think that we need to see AI research in the same way we see biological weapon research - a visit from a SEAL team or a cruise missile for any identified laboratory. Smash the disks, burn all the print outs!

Okay, this is hyperbolic and unrealistic, but I agree with this lion-maned YouTuber - we are really not ready.

AI as a tech is game changing, but it practically demands at least UBI (and probably some form of socialism) as a prerequisite. We, meanwhile, are still electing conservative governments! The same arseholes that will label the legions of unemployed artists, actors, musicians, coders, admin assistants etc etc as lazy and cut their benefits.

Does anyone truly believe that a tech that can replace half of human jobs is going to create happy outcomes in today’s society? Or will it just make tech-bros and scammers richer, and virtually everyone else poorer?

Working from home has its pros and cons. Fortunately, in my experience, the pros are all mine and the cons are all someone else’s. That kind of colours my judgement.

Religion has certain self-reinforcing properties. Kind of like genes that make it more likely to propagate against other forms of information.

• Believing without question is better than questioning
• Not believing will be punished
• Virtue will be rewarded
• Spreading the belief is a virtue
• You should obey your parents

Combine that with young human brains being malleable, and religion tends to continue against all odds.

Clowns who think like this need to fuck all the way off… and, honestly, it’s up to older folk like me to make that clear. Younger folks are going to be fooled or scared into thinking like this and be unable or unwilling to speak up. We who have less pressing concerns need to have their backs.

That and the woke mind virus.

Why did its valuation tank after Elon Musk took over and started enacting his policies? Perhaps we’ll never know…

If, like me, you do a lot of Chromecasting from your browser, you’ll want to install fx_cast. You need to do a bit of manual installation to get it running, but it works great when you do.

Pretty much all of them… I have so many memories of old 80s computer games where all I remember is level 1. It appears that I was terrible and perfectly happy with that.

Difficult…

• Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Genesis
• Misplaced Childhood - Marillion
• Prequelle - Ghost
• Oh, Inverted World - The Shins
• Ten - Pearl Jam
• Tubular Bells II - Mike Oldfield
• Vast - Vast
• English Settlement - XTC
• The Friends of Mr Cairo - Jon and Vangelis
• Appetite For Destruction - Guns n Roses

Yep. Even when clicking the single checkbox captchas, I try really hard to click it “just like a human would”. Which is weird, because I am a human. I think.

I had a similar need, and it prevented me from moving to FireFox for a long while. Luckily, I did manage to get fx_cast to work, and it’s been flawless ever since. In fact, I’d say it work more reliably than Chrome’s casting!

I use it for work. Other than having to think for a second to find weirdly hidden menu items, it’s fine. At least for my purposes, as a .NET dev. One thing I love about it is Windows Sandbox… really wish Linux would could up something similar.

Yeah, it’s weird. I’d been trying it on and off since 1997, and always bounced off because of some annoyance or other. Now… nothing. It’s very low friction.

It’s interesting how far Linux desktop has progressed recently… I don’t hate Windows, in fact I think it’s a great OS for most purposes. But I happened to try Linux Mint a few years ago in a fit of pique about being excluded from the Win11 upgrade for spurious reasons… and it just kind of stuck.

Two years later and I am full on Linux now. Don’t even have a Windows partition (though I do keep a VM). And I’m about to buy a new laptop that I intend to buy without an OS, it will never be touched by Windows, there’s just no need.

For my purposes, Linux does everything now. OS, software, the games I want to play… I never even think about it. Also, everywhere I look, I see Linux - my Steamdeck, my MiSTer, my Pis, my Miyoo Mini. It’s everywhere…

Pretty good. It’s my default morning scroll, at least.

I’ve got a lot more comfortable with it since using Alexandrite on desktop and Sync on mobile.

The only thing really missing at the moment is content. It tends to be good for the high profile stuff, but a bit lacking for the niche stuff. I still sneak back to the other place on occasion to catch up on smaller communities… hopefully that will come with time.