I learned so much at school, hacking crappy computers because I was bored. Boot disks in my backpack, hex editing the typing lesson saves, packing emulators and ROMs in one floppy at time and merging them back together (I even wrote a BASIC program for this because I didn’t know that tools existed to compress and chunk large files). And just exploratory hacking for fun, writing scripts and tools and stuff just to see if I could.

Chromebooks are the opposite of that, we bought our daughter a Chromebook and on realizing that it was only a tablet with a keyboard it went back to the store. She has my old Linux desktop now and knows a lot more than her friends

Your local janitorial supply is better than Amazon.

Honestly every household should have an account at one, everything there is practical and works well unlike most modern consumer products. Dirt cheap too.

Stuff like broom and dustpan, mop and bucket, spray bottles, squeegees, concentrated cleaning products, paper towel… Buy commercial grade, buy it for life.

Interesting here in Canada we call it Donair and it’s made from spiced meat. Lamb, beef or chicken. Then there is tzatziki sauce or garlic and hummus, and pickled vegetables as well as regular ones.

We also claim to have invented it, the “Halifax Donair” yet it’s sure similar to Turkish shawarma and Greek gyros…

Been using one of these apps to try to identify the many wild plants in my native pastures. Mostly just out of curiosity and conservation. Likewise it helped identify some trees and shrubs the previous owner planted around the yard.

They are far from perfect but are a good starting point as you get lots of pictures to compare to your mystery tree, you finish the job yourself.

Gut an AC from the dump. Replace the condenser with a tube in tube heat exchanger, using your cold water as a heat sink. Brazed plate HX if you’re feeling rich. Replace the cap tube with a TXV for better load tracking. Recharge with R290.

T Sure this is even further beyond your skill level but is the best possible way to use a source of cold to chill your apartment. You can locate it anywhere convenient, not just by the window. You could likely get a COP over 5 and be discharging the water in a fairly modest stream at around 30-40C.

what’s the purpose of holding the most important job in the world, if you constantly have to worry about going to prison? Ridiculous.

Big yikes there. The purpose is to serve the American people.

The President is not the King of America, and its easy to not have to worry about going to prison - just don’t commit crimes. Before Trump, the question wasn’t even relevant.

They want society to oppose immigration and work visas so that these people will have to work as illegals, for lower pay and worse working conditions.

Despite all the right wing wall talk, the wealthy actually benefit from a somewhat porous border for this reason.

Even as a rancher (native prairie, low input) I agree beef is way too cheap. Well, it was, now it’s starting to be more appropriately priced.

Considering everything from the labour involved in raising it ethically to the nutritional value, the consumer pays very little for beef for what they’re getting. Even if it means people eat less beef, the price should go up. It would also favour small farmers like me who would rather raise less cows sustainably on grass than overgraze chasing high volume sales.

This would make a good explanation for the bizarre biblical angels, especially having parts of their “body” that aren’t connected to each other. They only appear disconnected in the 3D projection we see, and are actually parts of a 4D organism.

I draw the line at “overpopulated” when our resource consumption is unsustainable to the point where we are becoming the sole consumer of the planet.

It’s commonly stated that we would need 2 planets the same size to sustain our current population in a way that doesn’t result in eventual collapse.

We’ve cleared vast land areas and scoured the sea of fish in our quest for calories. Eating bugs will not be the solution that makes us sustainable.

It’s been proven our population increases every time we increase our carrying capacity, such as through the invention of nitrogen fertilizer, mechanized agriculture etc. And there has never been a time that there were not people starving somewhere.

If we carry on this path we will be eating bugs and people will still be starving while ecosystems continue to collapse. It sounds like there is no net gain, IMO.

Some of the concepts in this book really stuck with me, but I had no idea what the title was! Thanks!

“Some days you’re the original, some days you’re the copy” or something like that

Valid point. When I grew up fishing for shrimp as a kid I was quite terrified of them until I was taught how to eat them.

I can assume they taste bad, because otherwise we would all be eating them already. Humans eat just about everything on the planet if it’s tasty, even if it’s really weird. Example: shrimp, lol.

Personally I don’t see the need for it when we have plenty of plant sources of protein like pulses, and we can raise ruminants on otherwise useless land (like my hilly, rocky farm).

It seems to me just an excuse to continue overpopulating the planet. Sure, we could develop new protein sources to feed 10 billion - but if we had kept our population to the 4 billion it was in the 1970s we could all be eating thick beef steaks and salmon without worrying about straining the carrying capacity of the planet.

Maybe we should focus on getting our population down to a sustainable level before we worry about new and exotic foods.

I still think that, environmentally consciously, we should all switch to a mostly plant based diet and explore meat alternatives without fear.

I don’t have an issue with this statement, in fact I have friends who grow beans and lentils and I cook and eat dry beans every day in addition to my lamb. Plant proteins are healthy and delicious, and they easily stand alongside other standard dishes on our plates. Everyone I know eats a lot of beans.

My issue with the bugs is the same as I have with soy protein. Soy protein has been snuck into all manner of processed foods to boost protein numbers while replacing the higher quality proteins that you would expect in those foods (i.e. many cheap chicken breasts are injected with a solution of salt water and soy protein to plump them up and make you think you got more “chicken”)

I feel like using insects this way just is another step in adulterating our food supply, separating those like you and me who know what we are eating from the “commoners” who will not.

I have no problem with explicitly eating bugs outright if you choose to, I just don’t want to have them snuck into my hamburger at a restaurant.

Interestingly my ex-wife was from Taiwan and had never eaten insects except as a novelty - so it must be a different part of Asia where it’s common. Taiwan tends to like fish, pork and chicken as well as tofu and black beans.

That’s the problem, it isn’t delicious. That’s why they keep coming up with schemes to use them as a protein additive, like “cricket flour”.

I raise lamb free range on pasture, no inputs other than grass, and that’s what I’ll be eating for the foreseeable future. Let me tell you, that’s delicious.

I would encourage anyone else concerned about factory farming to find a small producer, most of us will gladly even give you a tour and let you see our herds, we love to show off healthy animals on green grass. And we’re often cheaper than the supermarket these days, no greedy middlemen to mark it up.

He just said “hairy ass”, well after hearing that I hope it’s “he” anyways for his own sake

The difference is that shrimp are delicious? Last time you got a bug in your mouth what was your instinctive response?

The great reset is bogus but there’s definitely a “conspiracy” to get us to eat bugs… A boring, capitalist conspiracy. Just the next step in the race to the bottom, another cheap and low quality food that the unwashed masses can afford to keep them alive and trudging off to work.

I will eat bugs when I see the billionaires have them on their plates.

Never used Caddy, but if you’re running a variety of services Traefik also is pretty easy to deploy, especially if you’re using Docker containers. You can set it up to use let’s encrypt fairly easily to handle all the SSL stuff.

I played 3 and NV on 360, both games were badly marred by being as much loading zone as they were game. Ruined the experience of snooping around for loot and side quests as opening a door back into the wasteland could take minutes. I had to stick to mostly the main quest.

4 was a far better “game” for being played on PC, but I agree NV plot was great. I just didn’t want to replay and get the different endings, as the game itself was painful to play.

I should replay them on PC someday, especially if there are graphical update mods available.

but I couldn’t think of a better image to use

kind of sums up the problem our society is struggling with. Chad is perfect here. Why should you try to think of a better image to use?

We need to rationalize that humans like this sort of thing, and also that they shouldn’t demand it of others.

Is it laughable to demand game characters always be hot? Yes

Do people appreciate fan service characters? Also yes

Humans have been sexualizing everything forever, it’s in our nature. But we need to stop being so damn creepy about it.

I think you’re misreading the point I’m trying to make. I’m not arguing that LLM is AGI or that it can understand anything.

I’m just questioning what the true use case of AGI would be that can’t be achieved by existing expert systems, real humans, or a combination of both.

Sure Deepseek or Copilot won’t answer your legal questions. But neither will a real programmer. Nor will a lawyer be any good at writing code.

However when the appropriate LLMs with the appropriate augmentations can be used to write code or legal contracts under human supervision, isn’t that good enough? Do we really need to develop a true human level intelligence when we already have 8 billion of those looking for something to do?

AGI is a fun theoretical concept, but I really don’t see the practical need for a “next step” past the point of expanding and refining our current deep learning models, or how it would improve our world.