I disagree, a fridge to me is a cool place to put a big screen for useful information. You know, all the stuff that was promised and under delivered on when they first pitched smart fridges, like shopping lists, calendars, the weather.

The reason why in 2025 I would never consider buying a fridge with an internet connection, is because it’s clear I’m never getting those features from fridge manufacturers. They would only put a network connection on a fridge for half baked “features”, which get more ads with every firmware update, and eventually remotely brick the device. In short, to enshittify your smart fridge.

My point is that it’s not that there is no reason to not put a network connection on a fridge. It’s that capitalists can’t be trusted not to enshittify whatever useful smart feature they implement.

And many more mildly hindered, but in a way which is easily and safely resolvable while maintaining flow

Yeah Stalin was like “You want to see totalitarianism with socialist window dressing?”

I think this is mostly a symptom of the gerontocracy. Most elected officials have not grown up with computers, which is already likely to make them incurious about them. Couple that with being in office so long, likely developing a very high opinion of themselves that they know best. I would guess a significant minority is actively hostile to learning anything about computers, so you can hire any professional to explain stuff with baby talk, it won’t work on them. Combine that with the rest of the technologically illiterate politicians just being indifferent, and you get this kind of policy.

Spend 10s of millions on TV ads on which consultants get a 15% fee, got it /s

It makes more sense if you read it as a threat.

Under a very strict interpretation, that should mean any LLM trained on GPL code should be GPL as well. To prove that is the case seems tough though, just like artists you would need to make the LLM produce a substantial part of the licensed work to prove said work was part of the training data.

If that would hold up in court is a completely different question though, and then there is also the question of what organization is willing and able to cough up the legal fees to litigate this.

Any day now

Beer is just shy of 95% water, the other significant fraction is ethanol, which is about 80% as dense as water. I’d say doing the calculation as if it’s all water is already more accurate than any volume estimate you’d be able to come up with.

Yup, just look at what happened to De Blasio. Mild criticism and they kidnapped his daughter.

Now that’s a tax rate I could get behind.

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.