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Comment Re:As a former officer... (Score 1) 168

This is why I groan a little bit when I hear people say "We are not a democracy , we are a republic".

The United states is a republic AND a democracy.
China is a republic AND a dictatorship.
The United Kingdom is a monarchy AND a democracy.
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy AND a dictatorship.

Its two separate axes. Even though its arguable that North Korea is a monarchy due to the suspiciously hereditary nature of their presidency, monarchies tend to also include an aristocracy with houses and lords and all that sort of guff. Plus they also have "Democratic" in their name, and we all know that very much is not true.

Comment Re: Yes. (Score 1) 64

One reason I actually really like MacOS is theres this big glossy dumbed down but efficient UI but under the hood its basically UNIX with all the bells and whistles one would expect from UNIX (all your awks and seds and greps , everythings a file, etc etc etc). Which means my mother can drive MacOS happily clicking on the big colorful buttons that do precisely what they say they do, but I can flip open a terminal and start micromanaging the kernel execution scheduler. (I'm sure there must be something similar for windows, I dunno, maybe regedit tweaking or powershell or something, but I've never bothered to learn it, because I only really use windows to boot into steam and murder space marines.)

I think that ought be the standard. The easy-mode UIX compliant friendly interface for the common folk, and a big but useful mess of hidden functionality for the geeks, preferably in a format where we can use our experience without having to deal with dreary youtubes where a guy shouts tech words for 30 minutes in incomprehensible broken english (or worse, some AI just makes shit up for 30 minutes in a droneing cookie-cutter ai voice)

Comment Re:Really Cool, But... (Score 1) 63

Its entirely possible they are interested in the tech itself. What works in wee little model and what works in a 10mil full size aircraft aren't always the same (both physics wise and production cost wise). Theres a reason why IRL helicopters favour a single giant blade while dinky little models prefer the quadcopter design.

There are RC VTOL planes out there. But perhaps this one just works better?

Comment Re:The cloud is a trap (Score 1) 18

The problem is local compute is absurdly front loaded cost wise. The big Nvidia cards that can run the larger models (And no a 5080 isn't even close) the costs can run in the tens of thousands for just one. If your needs are modest a Mac Studio MIGHT cover inference (256gb unified memory goes a long way, and most of the key libraries now support metal) but for serious work you gotta go Nvidia, and that aint cheap.

Comment Re:Oracle defines employees as temporary, agents, (Score 2) 30

Its this thing that I assume is screwing up the universities. Universities usually have giant pools of people working in various capacities, from admin full timers, to academics, t ground staff, professors, and more often then not a huge number of postgrads not exactly on the payroll but still working on research projects whilst living off scholarships and grants. Even a small university could have upwards of 5000 employees, contractors and postgrads.

I *dont* understand why universities would tolerate this sort of corporate bullying from Oracle, when alternative JVMs and DBMS are *right there*. Though I strongly suspect Oracle Financials are the sticking point.

Comment Re:Finally! (Score 2) 130

Yeah this sounds fun.

Honestly, I thought old Mel had passed away. So, it's a bit of a delight to hear that at 98 he's still going strong and directing films. Though, we'd definitely hope this one doesn't get stuck in development hell. Even optimistically, he wouldn't have much time left.

Comment Re:Gaslighting writ large (Score 1) 90

No, there actually is a genuine concern here, and it might be unsolvable, one of those "contradictions in capitalism" the marxists used to complain about.

Heres the problem,

On one hand, the basic physics of resource consumption is that theres a hard limit on how much stuff we can dig up/grow/etc and its pretty clear we are pretty close to that limit. At least if we want to have a planet we can actually live comfortably on.

On the other, populations around the world are ageing and once people hit a certain age they need to stop working because of health, capacity and frankly dignity. Nobody wants to be a 90yo working in a factory. And frankly its almost certain by that point the body just isnt capable of that at all. So as people retire OTHER people need to produce items for them to consume so they dont starve and die (and get medicine etc). I read somewhere you need 3-4 working people per retired person to have a situation where everyone can get food and shit. And that means if were not replacing people at a high enough rate with children, the economy will collapse (For an accessible example of this watch this video about south korea https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ).

I dont know if this is fixeable outside of massive automation. And unlike the earlier mentioned marxists, I dont think a change in economic system would actually fix this (Though it might solve other problems). We're kinda fucked unless we can throw a LOT of robots at the situation. All of us (Japan is not alone in this problem. Far from it)

Comment Re:Steam-only? or Steam+XBox+GamesPass? (Score 1) 40

Out of curiousity I grabbed one of those steamdecks. And heres the thing, its played every game I've thrown at it flawlessly. Oh some things aren't quite as pretty as they are on my desktop gaming PC, but thats because the desktop has a 3060. But the point is, it runs. The only real hickup is sometimes the controls dont translate well to the handheld controller format (though weirdly, dwarf fortress is ...... intuitive?..... on it)

Comment Re: It's not a decline... (Score 2, Interesting) 181

I think a lot of folks who didnt really get bluesky miss how its central mechanic works with the multiple feeds. Its a bit like mastodon in that yeah, theres a decided lack of folks screaming at you about how evil black people that sadly seems to be the main form of communication on twitter now. Rather what you CAN do, and this is where I see a similarity with mastodon, is find a specific feed on a topic and just have that topic. So for instance I have a strong interest in Astronomy (my hobby) and Climate Science (what i actually do 9-5) , and those feeds are just 100% astronomers and actual climate scientists. My mother got into it after I showed her how to subscribe to genealogy feeds and feeds about her favorite talent show and "drag queen" show celebs. Now she can just read about those topics and not have some psycho screaming american politics at her (we are not americans).

Like mastodon, what it *lacks* is the poison-brained drama of twitter. Absolute psychos screaming at each other about american politics.

Bluesky sometimes feels like an echo chamber, but thats because people arent subscribed to the feeds where those sorts of discussions happened. Because yes, there are people screaming at each other about american politics, on american politics feeds. I just like Bsky because I have zero interest in that shit. And if I do get curious (admittedly whats happening in the US right now is at least mildly entertaining in a ghoulsih sort of way) I can always just log onto X and check out what the brainworms crowd is up to.

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