While an aggressive attitude won’t change the mind of bigots, a polite and respectful response to someone who advocates for forcing kids to go through the wrong puberty is going to be especially difficult for people with personal trauma for it, and it’s unreasonable to expect it of them.

I think it’s a reasonable reaction to throw polite discourse out when people use “moderate” as a cover for their bigotry. This is like when “moderate” person said that segregation of black people was reasonable when people were fighting for their civil rights, and that since the moderates weren’t pro-slavery so they were the good guys. No, you’re not the good guys, you’re just not as bad as the super evil guys. Congrats.

Now I won’t tell you to “fuck off and die”, but I will tell you to fuck off. If you were someone I personally knew, I would have put in the effort to be polite and try to educate you or whatever, but since we don’t know each other it’s unlikely to land.

I say it as someone who used to think like you.

That was a nod to Great Moments in Unintended Consequences. (Example)

For me it’s branding something as “AI” as a buzzword. Almost all product marketing is full of AI hype these days.

The Year: 2092

The Problem: Timezones are annoying

The Solution: Space mirrors! A series of mirrors in space would rotate to keep the entire planet under a single time zone. A perfect global time system is born!

Sounds like a great idea! With the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

Any front engine rear drive car going in reverse, lol.

There is always the Wikipedia style link to the definition whenever such word arrives. This is what browser tabs are for.

If that ever happens, I would start bringing duct tape to flights, tape a magazine to cover the screen.

I remember having a conversation with a former friend a while ago, and he, as a guy who worked for a certain company that makes most of its revenue from delivering ads, spoke about requiring use of front facing camera and using eye tracking technology to ensure you’re actually watching the ads and not going somewhere else while the ads play. If you aren’t looking at the ad, it will play another ad afterwards.

He spoke about it as something he is looking forward to, since it would increase revenue. Pretty sure he was pitching this idea to his boss hoping to get a promotion.

If these are signs of being old, I was born old.

They did win because of how the electoral college works. Both Trump and Bush lost the popular vote and won the election because the system is designed in a stupid way.

Personally, I would never give Reddit a single penny. Their garbage CEO does plenty to get people to leave and I am sure it will keep like that.

Your phone’s email app is a client, but I digress… I hate using the browser to access emails. I use many different email accounts with multiple email providers to compartmentalize my emails and avoid spam. I used Thunderbird for years before switching to Geary and now back to Thunderbird.

My first time trying to get my mother to switch from Windows to a Linux based OS wasn’t successful because there was too much friction and inconvenience for her, and she wasn’t willing to even entertain the idea of Linux for years after that. My second attempt was successful because Linux is much more user friendly than it used to be 13 years ago, and I changed my approach to make it as frictionless as possible.

Firefox just set to block 3rd party cookies + some basic extensions like adblocking and some easy privacy stuff is a good way to go about it, because it’s better than what she used previously and it doesn’t become inconvenient to her. She doesn’t know what an operating system is, or what cookies are… She just uses the computer to browse the web, emails, and light office work. She even says she prefers the current setup (though that’s because her old computer was chugging with Windows and runs smoothly now with a less bloated OS)

No need for noscript, deleting cookies, fingerprinting, or user agent stuff… Only introduce these to them if they express interest in privacy and are interested in learning more. If you try to thrust it upon them too suddenly they will just think “Linux isn’t a good user experience and is only good for tech enthusiasts and programmers”.

At least 60% of my internet time is YouTube. I rely on it for entertainment, news, education, discovering music, technical help, ETC…

Could I live a meaningful life without it? Probably, people have been living meaningful lives before the invention of the computer in general… But I wouldn’t give it up because there is an immense amount of incredible content there that genuinely makes my life better.

I think it depends on how good your sense of smell is. Mine is really bad, so if I had my eyes covered and was wearing noise cancelling headphones, I wouldn’t be able to tell if there are people in my area unless they haven’t showered in a while… Being able to distinguish between people? I can’t even differentiate between the smells of popcorn and peanut butter.

On the other hand, I know someone who was able to smell a “coppery” smell on someone which no one else notice. Eventually she convinced him to see a doctor and they found a rare condition that I can’t remember which.

I am a staunch opposer to the death penalty, and believe no crime, no matter how severe warrants an execution, but I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the execution of Nestlé executives because they aren’t worth a single calorie spent on their defence.

I’m open to the idea that should a sentient AI be made in the future, with complex emotions and desires, then that AI could create art. As it is right now, it is completely artless.

What? I was talking about Vietnam, just because they are communist now doesn’t mean they will stay communist. I didn’t mean that Russia is communist now, perhaps I wasn’t clear in phrasing.

USSR collapsed and looks at Russia now. Just because they are communists now doesn’t mean they won’t become fascist in the future.

I do consider photographers as artist, because there is an intentional creative process and the creation of the image; there’s a great deal of skill and artfulness to photography. When a photographer sees something they want to photograph, they decide the position, the blur, the composition, the focus… All of that is intentionally done to direct the attention of the viewer to the subject(s) the artists wants, perhaps in a specific order. It requires an artistic process to create art.

What I don’t consider as art is when a security camera catches footage, this isn’t art, it’s an image that was created without a creative intent behind its creator, just like AI generated images have no artistic intent behind them.

Prompting an AI to generate an image doesn’t make someone an artist just like if I were to hire an artist to draw something for me doesn’t make me an artist. Of course, if I hired an artist to draw something, the result is still art as it was created with an artistic process and intent, whereas AI lacks that therefore there is no art.

In the future, should a fully sentient and conscious AI exist, I would be able to acknowledge them as artists if they follow the same artistic intent when creating an image.