I get how parts prices and everything else got more expensive… but that’s just insane. Most I’ve ever paid for a Pi was 40 euros for a model 3. They’ve gotten way too expensive since then. The WHOLE IDEA behind them was cheap and cheerful computing. Did a lot of cool projects with them that just aren’t worth it with expensive hardware.

This shit reminds me of that helicopter gunner scene in Full Metal Jacket:

“Everyone who doesn’t show their face is an AI. Everyone who does show their face is a well-disciplined AI.”

Problem is that most people and automated systems are downright terrible at figuring out what’s actually AI. Even AI itself can’t always tell if it’s AI.

I’ve had people accuse my posts on social media as AI, just because I can write more than two sentences without spelling errors. Since they can’t, they think nobody can…

So now I tend to leave the occasional delibarete spelling mistake just so people don’t think this was written by ChatGPT. Unless I put that in my prompt, obviously 😂

YouTube’s bullshit is having some interesting effects for sure. Have you noticed how more and more channels are now including short clips of them doing the actual voiceover? It’s usually not even that long, like a second or two or sometimes even less. But apparently that’s now needed to prove that there’s an actual human behind the channel.

I do find it a bit distracting, but I’d rather not lose those channels either…

Yup. And replaced with utter shitheads who toed the line. I stopped visiting a lot of great subs after that.

In the wake of the Luigi Mangione shooting, bans went into overdrive. Even using the name Luigi in any context could get you banned. I’ve seen people get their account nuked for posting Luigi’s Mansion gameplay footage.

That place is an utter clown show at the best of times.

Reddit did everything in its power to get rid of the users that made the platform what it is. Or rather, what it once was. It’s barely a shell of the former glory days.

And if you get rid of your power users who make good content and good comments, well, this is what happens.

Everyone can, there’s no legal issues with it. Same as wheelchairs. You can buy and use one if you like. Of course, people will be weirded out if you do it, but there’s absolutely nothing illegal about it.

That said, I’ve never needed a cane even though I’ve been trained to use a ‘recognition cane’ to cross the street (I went to a school for the visually impaired, where they teach everyone how to do that).

Yep. That’s the sort of thing that interested me as a visually impaired guy (I see about 20 percent with my contacts). It’s a shame I can’t really buy and use them for that since I’d likely get physically assaulted for using them for benign purposes.

Yeah we remember. Because that’s a literal fucking warcrime. You’re not allowed to destroy historical sites.

While I agree that destroying books is bad - even common ones - it’s also not technically illegal. If I want to burn a first edition of whatever book worth thousands of dollars… I’m legally allowed to do that.

I can also see the benefit of having a digital version of a rare book that can be enjoyed by thousands as opposed to sitting on a shelf. But yeah, definitely hold companies accountable for destroying them. There has to be a better way to do that work and still have a useable book afterwards.

Well, I do imagine there’s some caveats as to the efficacy of welfare programs, but we’ll stick to this topic :D

There’s been hundreds of food programs over the decades, but there really isn’t a good way to do it. If you just sent aid to a government or group, it tends to either destabilise the local economy or empowers people you don’t want to empower, like armed groups who can just take that aid for themselves.

But if you send individual aid, there’s issues too. For example, let’s say you set up a ‘work for food’ program. Sounds great, right? But what that ends up doing is that the WFF option is more attractive than tending your own farm or doing work with future benefits. Basically, WFF pays now - a farm doesn’t.

The best way to help is to give people tools and knowledge. Teach a man to fish and all that. But when faced with kids starving now, that’s obviously a hard sell.

I work for a newspaper and actually spoke to a gentleman a couple days ago whose student group helped set up a school in Ghana 30 years ago. Kids who grew up in the literal gutter got free schooling there. And it works! The reason we spoke was because the school is now setting up a music program and they’re collecting used musical instruments. He told me that during his last visit, he met a girl who went to that school and was now graduating from university. Isn’t that amazing?

Problem is, that takes 20 years to do. And that’s a mighty difficult thing to accomplish in places that are actively in conflict like Sudan.

The article is not wrong. But the reality is, we’ve tried to help places like a Sudan a lot over the decades. I’d say we helped TOO MUCH.

We sent food aid which made them dependent on us. It didn’t incentivise them to fix their issues, it just made them reliant on outside help. Meanwhile, the population skyrocketed. There’s more mouths to feed, more famine, more conflict.

At some point, a country needs to fix whatever’s broken. And it won’t be pretty; it never is. But I don’t think interfering in an internal conflict like this will do any good to anyone. Can we as the west even reasonably figure out who the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ are in this conflict? Is there even a good or bad side to begin with?

Exactly. There’s a huge gap between ‘feeling cold’ and ‘being cold’. The human body is perfectly capable of operating for extended periods at temperatures that we deem ‘uncomfortable’. After all, our species survived to the present day, and proper clothing and central heating are relatively new inventions.

The human body itself produces a tremendous amount of heat. Go sit in a cold room with a few friends and it’ll soon get toasty.

I’ve spent a good amount of hours outdoors in cold and rainy weather. If you give in to ‘feeling cold’, the body doesn’t really learn to adapt to it. I know exactly when my body goes from ‘this feels cold’ to actually being cold and at risk of hypothermia.

“Mr President, there are aliens…”

“Yes, I know, that’s why we’re building the fence. It’s going to be fhe best, tallest fence anyone’s seen in the history of fences. And Mexico is going to pay for it!”

“… sigh…”

Assume all contacts are hostile and practice good OPSEC.

Which distro would you recommend for gaming? I usually hear people like Mint for that.

God yes. Back in 1995, the web felt like a little village. You knew everyone in your particular digital neighbourhood so to speak. Lots of great forums, lots of little niche websites… nothing was really commercialised yet:

And frankly, I liked that it was a nerdy thing as well. Everyone shared at least some level of knowledge and understanding of what the web was. And we were all some level of nerd, whether it was Star Trek, Star Wars, LOTR, trains, flightsim, Sci-Fi or whatever niche interest you had.

We lost all that when we made the web too accessible to the general public. We should’ve kept it to ourselves.

Personally, I’m a really long form guy :D Particularly on technical subjects and/or disasters. For example, ‘Well there’s your problem’ tends to run at least 2, usually closer to 3 hours. And ‘Brick Immortar’ recently put out a 3+ hour video on the SS Marine Electric disaster.

That’s the stuff that really makes me excited. So I definitely support loooong form creators where possible.

You’re not wrong on that thought. But it’s even worse: with TikTok and YouTube Shorts, people aren’t even really seeing proper YouTube videos, just short snippets. God only knows what that’s doing to people’s attention spans, but I doubt it’s good.

I feel like I’m a dying breed: people who can enjoy long form content without needing a dopamine hit every five seconds.

Yeah, we can tell…

Unfortunately it’s not just a US problem. It’s more of a general issue. People ‘read’ a lot, but generally the wrong things. Like social media. And it’s causing people to lose their ‘reading muscles’ so to speak.

When I first got online in 1995, forum posts were much longer and more insightful. These days you see a lot of ‘tl;dr’ attitudes.

In my opinion, reading is a fundamental part of the human experience and important in people’s general development. Reading needs to be encouraged if possible, enforced if necessary. But there’s a lot of resistance to that.

You’re welcome, enjoy your odd new fact :D

Stuff like this is why I really enjoy The West Wing. It often has interesting real world arguments that it plays out smartly. A bit too optimistic in our current political climate, but still fun to watch.