I had to look up the panopticon reference, so I thought to share with others: ‘A proposed prison of supervision, so arranged that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times without being seen by them: proposed by Jeremy Bentam.’

I like the ‘ground up’ approach they mention that doesn’t rely on insecure ‘adversaries’. I’ll check it out soon.

It’s true (and it feels a bit dusty), but it’s still meeting my needs. I hope it’ll get picked up again or perhaps another project will replace it.

I installed a custom launcher that’s close to the stock one on my Pixel 3 specifically to make it possible to remove the Google Search widget. Now I have a Firefox widget that points to DDG.

If any are interested, the launcher is Lawn Chair, and it can be installed via F-droid.

This, and it’s not a human. All these analogies trying to liken a learning algorithm to a learning human are not correct. An LLM is not a human.

This hits the nail on the head. A major component of art is that it’s an outlet of human creativity, something we find fulfilling to both produce and consume. If creativity is delegated to machines, what’s left for us humans? At some point, we’ll grow tired of Taco Bell and re-runs, and what then?

That’s an interesting thought, that could potentially create corporate day jobs for artists.

Edit: I don’t believe in this idea, but thought it interesting. It’s better for artists to exercise creativity.

I often wonder, “Can’t my web browser keep Alphabet better apprised of my personal life and interests?” Yes, it can! Finally, an ad company that ‘gets me’.

I wonder if he’s selling any mugshot coffee mugs.

Not to worry my dear Wordpad coders: Neovim is a good alternative. One can always set wrap and the default font to Times New Roman.

One thing that exacerbates the problem is the values for gender and sex are reused. ‘Male’ can mean ‘I identity as male gendered’ or ‘my chromosomes are XY’ (choose one or both). If sex were consistently represented with different values (maybe as chromosomes XX, XY, others?), that might provide some clarity in good faith discussions. Finally, I’m not in medicine so YMMV.

Update: One thing I wanted to add: I also recognize that many discussions are ‘not’ in good faith and an informed participant will deliberately conflate the meanings of gender’s and sex’s values. Unfortunately, no recommendation can help a person whose mind is closed.

Edit: Added “Update”. Adjusted original comment’s casing.

Excellent. He’s had enough delays. Five months is more than enough time as he’ll have had 3 years to prepare for a trial such as this.

I don’t blame him for not wanting to travel. Airplane safety is a real concern these days.

I’ve been listening to the soundtrack recently. It’s so relaxing. I think my favorite track is Macalania Woods.

After using it since Lucid Lynx 10.04, I switched from Ubuntu to Mint last weekend. I’m lazy about distros these days, and I really didn’t want to switch, but Firefox instability was driving me nuts. The web browser must be reliable, IMO. It’s a fundamental requirement for a desktop OS, and this problem didn’t exist before snaps.

Me too. I’m glad the EU is out there thinking about these things.

Apple’s refusal to cooperate is both obviously profit motivated and infuriating. They’ve engineered this social gulf between iPhone and non-iPhone users. I often wonder about the collective social harm.

The low res photos and video are natural byproducts of squeezing modern media into an SMS message, but the ‘green’ bubbles take it to another level. The worst part is that the average iPhone user at best is apathetic. Meanwhile Cook suggested last year that we should just buy more iPhones as a solution.

I’m amazed it’s 2023 and we’ve still not universally adopted a protocol better than SMS. Thanks Apple

This is a positive take. No OS is perfect, but there are lots of reasons to give a Linux distro a whirl. Tech right now IMO has become disappointing, but Linux continues to be a shining beacon of fun and hope.

Did somebody say fire sale?