Not much better at all, tbh. The problems are systemic, not individual. Another Zucc or Thiel would step up.

Here’s an absolute classic unix koan about the terminal:

One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.

“The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward,” he scoffed. “Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface.”

Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master’s hand.

“I don’t understand you!” said the programmer.

Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.

“What are you trying to tell me?” asked the programmer.

Master Foo pointed at the programmer’s head. Then he pointed at a rock.

“Why can’t you make yourself clear?” demanded the programmer.

Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.

As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.

At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment

Source: https://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html

I had some of that at an extremely early age. Addicted ever since. I still can’t go a day without it without feeling terrible.

Came to the comments to add exactly this. Am I predictable, or is this just the natural reaction to this image?

The ending is a real cop-out though

DESKTOP! Wait, snake desktop? How’d that get in the script?

Of?

You can’t run an LLM on a crappy PC, that’s true. You need at least a decent CPU. If you’re running an LLM locally, there’s no calls to the outside world. I have a very mid computer, it isn’t great, and unfortunately I need to work with LLMs due to my job. A call to my local LLM might take ~2 minutes where using an online platform it might take ~30 seconds, but I think that’s a reasonable trade.

If you have a gaming PC, you have a platform that can run a local LLM.

If you really really want/need an LLM for some reason, install ollama. It’s the only safe and easy way to do it.

those peoples no longer under Soviet/Russian control appear to taking major steps as sovereign entities to resist Russian reestablishment of its former sphere

I hate this spheres of interest argument for exactly this reason: it logically follows that Eastern European, central Asian and Caucasian countries neither have nor deserve any sort of say in their future. If you’re not a world power, you’re not allowed to resist imperial expansion (yes, that’s what they’re doing). As an Eastern European, I refuse that denial of our autonomy out of hand.

Could not agree more. I’m a democratic socialist. I firmly believe that the ideas of that ideology, properly implemented, can drastically improve the standard of living for a huge percentage of the population.

I live in a country where our democratic socialist party is fantastically corrupt, lazy and completely bereft of any motivation to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit themselves. Consequently, I don’t support them. Results over ideology is an important mantra no matter what you believe.

Europe is primarily white people

Hah, that’s telling. Just FYI, there’s been generations upon generations of racism and ethnic hatred here in Eastern Europe. I guess we have the advanced racists: the ones who don’t hate you for your skin colour, but who your parents were, religion and primary language.

I’ll bet that if your dad grew up here in Romania, he’d be complaining about those sneaky Szeklers trying to steal Transylvania and Roma people being subhuman.

Also, he seems the type to pine for Europe because “We’re all Christian!”. Trust me, you haven’t seen “Christian love” like state religions persecuting people of the wrong sect. Orthodox Christianity is the state religion here, and Protestants of all stripes get treated like heathens.

Yup. Did specifically say that I was missing tons of stuff in that super short summary of the formation of Israel. Also left out the Balfour declaration, the White Paper of 1939, the Buraq uprising, the Black Hand, Lehi and their attempted alliance with Nazi Germany, and much much more.

Here’s the long version.

Short version is that in WW1, the UK conquered Palestine from the Ottoman empire. 1922-1948, the British ran the territory, getting shot at regularly by both native Arabs, the tiny number of native Jews, and the comparatively much larger group of immigrant Jews. In the 1940s, the UK asked for and got US help with counterterrorist operations, especially against Jewish ones. Arabs and Jews pinky promised to play nice with each other if the UK left, so rather than continue getting shot by everyone in the region, they left. Arabs and Jews immediately started a war as soon as the UK army left. Then, every single neighbouring country attacked the newly formed Israel, which they somehow survived.

(Missing HUGE amounts of context and nuance here, obviously)

Oh look, company scrip.

If you’re interested, the short version is that instances (A.K.A servers) are run by different people in different places. A reason to move instances might be:

1. My admin, the owner of the instance, has been doing things I heavily disagree with (bans, blocks, etc)

2. I don’t agree with the rules on my instance.

3. The instance is run in a country which criminalizes something that I care about, and so has to ban discussion of that thing (piracy, porn, etc).

4. I want to run a community on a specific instance for whatever reason, and so need an account there

The key is sharing a hobby. For me, it’s board games and TTRPGs. Much easier to hang if there’s an activity.

I missed the mention of Verizon. Good catch!

How do you know this is the US, rather than UK, AU, NZ or a British school in the EU?

EDIT: Looked at the original file linked here in the comments, and it makes reference to “HCPSS”, which according to a Google search means this is in Maryland. Your assumption seems to have been correct!

Most USs in the iron don’t use dryers