He does get a bit ranty. I still appreciate his take though. Some of the LLMs are super helpful for me for some tasks, but the hype cycle for AI is really a lot to take and it does warrant some actual pushback against it. I can tell I’m becoming more of an old man, but it’s nice to have someone else confirm how bad the Internet is becoming. It’s almost like a hazy dream for me of back in the early days when it was just people sharing weird stuff with each other and not the active battle to fend off ads and scummy sites to find things.

That’s almost the exact opposite experience for me. Maybe there’s been a more recent update, but I remember searching for specific phrases in decade old messages and the gmail (web site) search would just flat out refuse to show things but I could find them from my phone. I’ll try again, but to be honest, I’ve somewhat given up on google search in general for results that aren’t recent.

The search has been broken for me for a while. I get better results in the iOS mail app. Searching from within gmail will just flat out not show old results.

Similarly, in the midst of historic layoffs in the tech industry, no one blames the CEO for horrible management leading to the over hiring or bad management that led to this. O one blames Zuckerberg for renaming his company and betting an an absurdity that is already being scraped off of PR releases. All because some growth number goes up. It’s insanity.

I have an lg tv that I route through a pihole that blocks most stuff. I wasn’t going to connect it to the internet, but it had airplay support. I think I’m using this list: https://github.com/TheShawnMiranda/LG-TV-Ad-Block

I dont get it either. However the American pediatric association and a couple others keep suggesting it’s “cleaner.” I think it’s based on some large global datasets and there are less STIs with circumcised penises? Even WHO recommends it. It seems like recommended people clean themselves would be much easier…

Oh wow Usenet is still a good spot? That brings back good memories of sailing the seas.

It’s shwetek patels group at Univ. Washington. They’ve had some interesting stuff in the past, and are good at the PR part of things.

Plasma. It’s the most customizable and you can dive in and shape it. It feels much more natural for me to jump into.

I put xfce on older hardware.

Distro wise I tend to go with Ubuntu flavors most because they seem to have better compatibility for various software and stuff I need, but I haven’t really shopped around too hard in years. Work is RHEL (and clones) and they make me sad.

For me it depends on the mood. New stuff is fun, but stuff I know can be instantly trabsportative to moods or mental spaces and it feels good. New stuff can be too mentally engaging if I’m trying to do focus work or zone out. I think I listen to less new stuff now because I’m usually wanting to zone out with music more than actively engage with it.

I can’t comment on specifics. I’m back in linux after several years away in mac land. The snap experience is awful, and confusing. I have not had the same experience with flatpaks. They seem to act more like regular apps that you update. The issue with snap is that firefox will say the snap needs to update, and that the update is pending warning my I only have days (or hours) to use it, but no way to actually do the upgrade. Then it will say its upgrading, but nothing happens. I just keep using firefox, and every once in a while it may say something like the update failed (I honestly can’t remember, since I just ignore any notification with the word ‘snap’ in it since they’re all meaningless). Eventually, when I quit firefox, it might update and quit pestering me. But how knows? Maybe it won’t upgrade, and then I’ll open it again and it won’t be upgraded.

Flatpaks, I can just update in the package GUI (Discover for me, since KDE) alongside other updates, and we roll on.

Distro-wise, I dunno :/ I like ubuntu cause its more standardized in terms of software availability — most things will support an ubuntu package. However, I’m really considering just jumping into debian and going with the rolling releases.

I just read left hand of darkness this summer (and dispossessed and the first Earthsea!). Going in, I had heard so much about the gender aspects and I guess was expecting something more pointed, but was really surprised how it’s just not really a focus, but just naturally comes up in the world building. The book was incredible, and the Gethen societies felt so real and tangible. I really enjoyed this one and is the reason I picked up the other le guin books.

My edition also had a foreword by le guin about sci-fi and authoring lies and truth. That was also well worth reading too!

I don’t really have a problem with the main post you linked to. Are we a strictly pro-NATO server or something? I think I’m missing exactly what the issue is 🤷‍♂️

Not the op, but syntactly they are ver similar. And so for minor things like looping over a matrix or making a plot or some calculations, It’ll be the same. Your intro numerical course will not really know the difference. It’s when you get to the packages that there’s massive divergence. Matlab really sells packages that have all sorts of libraries and gui things built in to do some advanced calculations or pre-Canned tool. They also change the package syntax from time to time. For things like signal processing or filter design, the tools reign and most scripts depend on them. Octave has a totally difference package ecosystem and syntax for loading packages.

So for basic things, you can go between the two fairly easily. For anything advanced or for 90% of scripts you download from papers, octave will not work.

I’ve been on an Ursula le guin kick. Finished Left Side of Darkness, started Earthsea series (just book one) and am finishing up Dispossessed (since it’s due back to inter library loan soon). But sure what’s next. I have the expanse books on hand, but the semesters about to start and things get busy.

I use hckrnews.com as my interface for it and usually just look at the top 10 of the day.

First thing I saw was the Campari. Have you tried an iced coffee Negroni/americano? Super delicious. Iced coffee, vermouth, Campari. I also found that aperol in iced coffee went pretty well.

Otherwise, I love this setup! Moka pot, espresso, liquor cabinet. It’s all there!

Oh no! I had a great experience with 2 men and a truck when I he used them! No idea it was associated with the 1 800 junk folks

Yeah, I think this is the real reason its older folks here: We remember the old Internet. The old Internet was interacting and talking to new people. The modern internet is just dodging ads, and making data for companies serving ads.

I only remember that system having a cool looking racing game, and that game where the kid bonks stuff with his giant head.

Those games were super expensive back in the day too!