It's really nice of you to let the guy live rent free inside your head like that.

Oh, I don't know. An EV version of the Reliant Robin might be just what the world needs right now.

Bullshit weasel words. "Cleaner" does not mean "clean".

A shit sandwich, now with 50% less shit! is still a shit sandwich.

The US has never been a completely anarchistic hellhole - we've always had laws (aka regulations). Gambling, for example, was very tightly regulated for hundreds of years and only recently has been opened wide (with all the expected problems).

If you're desperate for capital-F Freedom, I hear Somalia is pretty lawless. You can go set up a compound and fiefdom there.

Hah, good to know. I almost wrote "F350" because they're the most egregious "luxury commercial trucks", but 150s are so much more common I went with that instead. Luckily they have plenty of carrying capacity for all that regret.

Oh, I know. It's a very thin lining.

Pickups and SUVs are already subsidized out the ass by getting to skirt emissions and safety laws due to being "light truck commercial vehicles". This bullshit fantasy has persisted for decades even as they've become far and away the highest selling commuter and passenger vehicles in the US.

Maybe if people had to start paying the real price of these gas guzzling murder machines they'd be more interested in a reasonable EV or hybrid sedan or minivan. The only silver lining of Trump's demented Iran war is diesel hitting $6 per gallon and the sound of all those F150 tears.

Being happy you won is unsportsmanlike because it makes the losers feel like losers.

See how quickly you can get rid of someone with a conflict of interest the moment that conflict goes against the powers that be? Imagine if Anthropic were Trump shills, how long would it take them to get rid of him? Years? Ever?

I've been hoping to see an in-browser AI that does realtime ad-blocking, privacy protection, and readability adjustments.

Extensions like uBlock are amazing and I have all the respect for the people who build it and maintain the definition lists, but it's always an arms race. Something capable of doing it dynamically and on-the-fly could be pretty powerful.

Is an LLM capable of this? Probably not reliably or quickly (especially a self-hosted one like what's shipped with Firefox today), but maybe it can iterate on it and come up with rules and definitions that are faster to evaluate for future requests.

Kids in particular like multiplayer games. You kinda do need a connection for those as local co-op long since went the way of the dodo.

The EFF is probably the most important advocacy organization that educates and acts on behalf of normal people's digital rights, freedoms, and privacy. The legal actions they take in support of these are meaningful. Now that the CFPB has been dismantled and the FCC and FTC had their teeth and spines removed, groups like EFF are the only thing we have in the US pushing back against millions of dollars of corporate lobbying money.

I'm not sure what you're talking about regarding RMS. Aside from the open letter they published after he was re-elected to the FSF board, which is fine to disagree with (I do), I don't think EFF did anything to him. Plenty of people pointed angry fingers at him in 2019 but AFAIK his resignation from the FSF was his own decision.

Absolutely not the case. The Neo is essentially Apple's first attempt at a budget laptop, and the market segment they're targeting is entirely different.

Case in point: My dad has been a Windows user for 20+ years and has always decried Apple as "decent hardware that's overpriced and running a lobotomized operating system." However he hates Windows 11 more and decided to replace his aging Windows laptop with a Neo last week. So far he's been impressed, though is still dealing with a learning curve. I guarantee you he isn't alone.

I think the Neo is Apple's attempt at getting into a new segment of lower-priced computers AND taking advantage of Microslop dropping the ball hard when it comes to Windows 11 shit quality and bullshit hardware requirements.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, I suspect the market really being cannibalized is potential new Linux users who go with a New instead of installing Linux on a cheap Windows laptop.

Nobody has the necessary time or energy to be an independent thinker on every topic.

Let's say, for example, that you're vegan. Your local supermarket advertises a pizza as being vegan. Are you going to accept this as fact, or are you going to spend your time doing research to verify that the pizza really is vegan, no cross-contaminants anywhere in the production chain, etc.?

Or take Linux. All the source code is available to read, but do you? Do you really? Did you read the ENTIRE Linux source code before installing it to make sure there was no hidden backdoor anywhere? If you did I both commend you and advice you to seek help. ;-) Just, y'know, be sure your therapist knows what they're talking about.

Well whaddya know.

Thanks, an interesting read.