Epstein isn’t even paying for it! It’s all of his friends, you know, from his list.

The technology will continue to develop in the background, more slowly, but steadily. Once society is ready to use it for something other than rabid speculation, it will be ready I suspect.

The battery that was placed there in case they ever want to withdraw your license to that book, which they can do by shorting out said battery.

Why is it so hard to accept that not everybody can stay awake while reading a scientific article?

I’m a PhD researcher and even I struggle staying awake sometimes.

No seriously, I fully agree, scientific articles are written for a specific, niche audience, i.e. not the general public. But science should be communicated to the public, in as accessible a format as possible. If you fail to do that, you get people saying “science is boring”, or worse, mistrust of science like it exists today.

And another thing: this shouldn’t be either-or between watching a video and reading an article. Watch the video, get a general understanding of the topic, see if it interests you. If you want to know more, dive into the article to deepen that understanding. I guarantee you’ll get a better understanding that way, because watching the video has already given you a general structure of the topic. Reading then serves to add details in that structure.

O as in oiseau

Excuse me, partially refund‽

Imagine going in for a new OS and getting Windows 11 😬 Must be like getting hospitalized and catching MRSA

Seems like it’s mostly error handling, which makes total sense to me. In a function with a lot of error conditions, where it also takes more than return <nonzero value> to report that error, the code would get very cluttered if you handle the errors inline. Using goto in that case makes the normal case shorter and more readable, and if proper labels are used, it also becomes clear what happens in each error case.

Sure, you can do that with functions too, but it’s much nicer staying in the same scope where the error occurred when reporting on it. Putting things in a function means thinking about what to pass, and presents extra resistance when you want to report extra info, because you have to change the function signature, etc.

“Be kind to individuals, but ruthless to institutions.” ~ Michael Brooks I think this is useful advice in general, but especially in this case.

Or even better: set up in-house software teams which partly contribute to FOSS, and partly work on in-house software. This can justify a larger developer pool, because when there is less in-house work for some reason, you reallocate some devs to open source work.

Of course contributing both money and developer time would be best.

Oh, and if that argument doesn’t work: if we don’t do it, CHINA will do it and do nefarious Chinese things with it, because they hate America.

Of the rapid-onset variety I think

Exactly! I’ve also had it with these homeless people thinking they can just place an encampment wherever without paying someone. Don’t they know free stuff is communism actually? I know the police clears them out once in a while, but that also costs valuable taxpayer money! Instead, why don’t we rent them spots under bridges, and in return the police leave them alone? /s obviously

What? Why the hate on vinyl? It’s not practical, nor is it anywhere near the sound quality available on services like Tidal or Bandcamp, but that’s not the point.

It’s a physical, irrevocable copy, in a world where everything is becoming a service which gets revoked when you stop paying. Sure, there’s some consumerism in there as well, but I doubt some plastic discs are going to make a dent compared to the millions of tons of clothing being produced by Shein, just to go straight into the garbage.

It’s not even the original spare I think. If you look at the middle brake light there’s way too much room.

In other news: violence against Jewish people is on the rise.

Irish people have contemporary, first-hand experience with colonialism and oppression from the British. I think their support for Palestine is admirable and brave, but it’s also not surprising given their recent and not-so-recent history.

It’s all about class struggle. Not many people know this, can you believe that? A guy called Karl Marx said that, very smart cookie he was. I used to be on the side of the rich, but I’m switching sides. They call me working-class Trump.

I feel like aggressive proponents of genAI are so because they are intimidated and/or jealous of the people they say they will replace. They lack the skills and critical thinking to become good at the task they want to replace, but also unwilling or unable to put in the work.

Instead of reckoning with this, they construct a phantasm where artists are “gatekeeping art”, and genAI is going to disrupt that gatekeeping. Meanwhile I think deep down they know that what genAI produces is derivative by definition, and not “real art” by any means.

That’s reparations for capitalism