BananaTrifleViolin

I think a lot of it comes from schools, and in particular physical education and competitive sports. There is nothing wrong with competitive sports but the attitudes around it in schools can be so toxic, and in particular it can be used to create hierarchies. The idea of being good at sports and that being masculine was something I certainly experienced a lot at school. Also people who weren’t as academic but thrived in sports were lauded.

My school had various sports teams and clubs, and fuck all academic activities. Sports aren’t toxic but the attitudes around them can be, and particularly adults who feed in toxic attitudes and values around it.

The BBC article that this article is a bizarre summary of is far better (the Gizmodo article even links directly to the BBC article). It give a far better overview of the issues; the main crux is they cost most than anticipated through both theft and cost of the machines themselves. The consumer’s disliking it is a less point and more naunced essentially “customer’s want the technology to work but it isn’t” which is also what you’ve said.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240111-it-hasnt-delivered-the-spectacular-failure-of-self-checkout-technology

Personally I preferred the self checkouts because I don’t want to interact with someone, but th they fail so much (because of the weighing which is to stop me being a supposed thieving scumbag, not to benefit me) and you end up standing around waving at a random stranger to come and fix the machine awkwardly while a massive queue waits impatiently for a machine. I’ve recently switched back to the manned checkouts for bigger shopping trips.

Actually a good example:

• If you have AIDs (A) then you have HIV (B). True
• You have HIV (B) if, and only if, you have AIDS (A). Not true
• If you don’t have HIV (B), then you don’t have AIDs (A). True, and the actual inverse of “If A then B”; which is “If not B, then not A”

Self Driving Cars - were getting used to the idea because of the half baked stuff that’s already here but it’s realistic this will make it mainstream in the coming years

“Cure” for cancer - the rapid progress in immunotherapy drugs is making more and more cancers realistically treatable. Cancers.are still terrible conditions but it does feel realistic that we are moving towards a “cure”. After that it’ll be a focus on preventing and reducing the horrible side effects of treating cancers.

Regrowing organs - this also seems increasingly realistic. We’re already routinely regrowing people’s immune systems for some conditions (autologus ransplants - where the donor is also the recipient). We’re also increasingly growing different types of tissues and organs in lab experoments. It’s looking plausible although hard to say when it’ll become mainstream.

AI - I’m not convinced this one is on its way. What I mean is true General AI. What is labelled AI now is nowhere near General AI; it’s sophisticated and impressive but also limited and deeply flawed. We’re in an era of hype to drive up share prices but the actual technology is error strewn and is essentially a remix engine for human generated creativity. I’m not convinced true General AI is on its way because at the moment they don’t understand how the current AI systems work. It’s unlikely you can proceed from what we have to full general AI stumbling around in the dark or by shear luck. Not impossible, but unlikely. I think the current methods will more likely hit a brick wall in prpgress - they are useful tools but may be an illusion when it comes to full AI.

You may have the GPU drivers installed but are they active? Look in “Software & Updates” on the Additional Drivers tab and see which drivers are active.

Installing the drivers is not enough, you have to select them to use them too.

If the latest drivers are active then you may need to think about switching to a legacy version (you have a pretty old CPU and GPU by current standards; newest drivers are not always best). You may also want to look at using older versions of Proton than the latest for similar reasons - there may be features and changes in newer versions that are just not going to work with your set up or your set up just isn’t tested to work with.

That’s a Linux (and similar) issue. When Linux updates via it’s package managers it will update Firefox in the background even though it’s open. Firefox then forces you to close it rather than open other tabs to prevent problems.

But you don’t have to install Firefox via the package managers or flathub. You can build it yourself or install a binary manually and I believe it well self update as it does on other platforms. I haven’t done it for a while though.

Otherwise manually control Linux updates so it doesn’t mess with Firefox when you’re in the middle of something important.

Edit: the exception on Windows would be if some other software is handling firefox’s updates or there is a group policy / system management of Firefox. I’ve never had this issue on windows on my own PCs

Edit: btw I have had worse happen on windows with chrome on a work pc. An update was forced on my and chrome close itself without warning and reopened with the update. Pissed me off no end.

You can use PowerPoint in a web browser with office 365. Really don’t need windows to run it anymore.

Yeah I saw a clip on twitch of a big streamer getting into another streamers car, and he said he’d been playing on his steam deck while his tesla was on auto-pilot. No one batted an eye lid.

Tesla does not have autonomous driving tech, it has assisted driving tech which people are treating like autonomous driving - including tesla who market it as Tesla Autopilot. It’s worth remembering it’s a “beta testing” programme to get to level 5 self driving; it is currently level 2 and needs active driver supervision at all time. And that’s ignoring all the controversy about the system Tesla has adopted which is cheaper and dumps a lot of sensor components others say are essential to actually achieve autonomous driving.

Tesla is basically a cow boy company who have managed to get the “BMW” stereotype drivers to buy their cars and beta test them on the roads. The rest of us are the road fodder for this dangerous approach.

Yeah, “stupid” is not defined around average intelligence. This whole panel is an example of a straw man fallacy to undermine someone saying “people are stupid”.

I’ve started seeing US pick up trucks here in the UK in a city and they really are rediculous. Really large (comically so) and the truck bit is open to the elements although I have never ever seen anyone using the truck bit for anything whatsoever. Rediculous waste of space and I’m surprised they’re ever legal here.

In fairness to Apple that is good design. Computers including phones should be intuitive and easy to use, but also accessible to more experienced users.

The keeping up with Jones stuff with apple though is really bad. Like kids going off the university getting premium Mac books when they could save money and get a generic windows lap top. Or the seemingly ubiquitous purchase of earpods - an expensive way to purchase earphones when there are so many cheaper alternatives, not least the dirt cheap 3.5mm wired earphones that phone manufacturers are trying to obliterate.

This is an interesting concept but doesn’t seem like it has long term legs.

It depends on what you mean by open source and also even eBook reader (I’m assuming eInk), but if people want open source e-readers I would say flashing existing reader hardware with open source operating systems would be the way to go. However I’m not sure if there is much motivation to do that.

There are Android based eink ereaders available with more freedom than Kindle devices (Boox is an example) and you can side load free or open source reader software onto Kobo (maybe not Android Kindles though?), and you can load free books onto e-readers via software like Calibre. So you can read books in privacy outside the vendors ecosystem - it kinda reduces the imputus to build an open source ereader (hardware or OS).

I’d love to see a truly open source Eink device - particularly software wise. But I doubt the demand is enough. And this Open Source hardware solution seems a bit too cut back to fit the bill.

And the commanding officer only tried to stop them when they heard the last victim asking for help and realised it was in hebrew.

Seems the IDF shoots first and asks questions later. This is what’s happened to unarmed jewish hostages, who were shirtless, holding a white shirt on a stick which is the universal sign of surrender. What about the million people living in gaza coming up against this? Holy fuck.

That valve uses Arch is irrelevant in all honesty. Proton is not a Valve product, Valve is merely one of its users and contributors, and it is not wedded to one distro…Similarly Valves own Steam packages are not distro specifi, and there are other gaming platforms to consider which also benefit from Proton (for example you can get Gog windows games working in Linux too quite easily), as well as all the Retro gaming options.

Pick a distro you personally like. I use Mint as I like the cinnamon desktop interface and the distro is pretty much good to go from fresh install. I use Mint both as a dual install with Windows on my PC and also within VMs in Windows. I still spend a lot of time using Windows because of specific games compatibility and work related apps.

EndeavourOS seems a good choice if you do want to go the Arch route but it’s only something I’ve played with in a VM.

If you want something gaming specific then Draugar seems like a good choice - it apparently uses Ubuntu LTS but with the mainline Kernel updates optimised for gaming. But I have no personal experience with the distro.

I also see a lot of people seem to like Pop!_OS, but again no personal experience.

I’ve had no issues with Mint on my setup.

Not strictly correct. Spotify pays out from its net revenues (revenues when billing costs and tax are removed) and it pays to the various industry rights holders who then distribute the money. There are lots of complex deals in place and big rights holders are likely to have better deals than ad hoc users, plus it’s different in different countries.

The 70% figure is a PR thing Spotify pushes about as part of its constant battles with rights holders on exactly how much it will pay them. It’s trying to claim most of the money goes to artists but it’s opaque how much goes where.

The safety angle may be overplayed but it is not the only element of this kind of change. Better and safer infrastructure for walking and cycling encourages walking and cycling.

So there are a whole host of benefits: reduced pollution, better citizen health and wellbeing, encouraging use of local walkable businesses, etc.

Also a reduction in deaths and injuries on a background of increased pedestrian and cycling is also noteworthy. I.e. not just reduced the existing injuries but also less injuries despite more people.at risk.

I don’t understand? You can download Dosbox and Dosbox-X in desktop mode and add them to Steam like other apps. Why do you need a website?

This may also be about trying to take control of OpenAI. Despite owning 49% of OpenAI, the company is seemingly set up so the 5 board members have control and they’re seemingly not under the control of investors.

Could this actually be about Altman and his allies trying to take the company fully for-profit so they could benefit? It also seems Altman is very close to Microsoft, so rather than product roadmap this might actually about trying to take control of the company.

Microsoft hiring the staff and forming an AI unit is a boon to them if it happens, but OpenAI still own and controls everything they’ve worked on up to date, and it seems the Investors don’t control that judging by the boards independance.

Meanwhile Altman is tweeting very concillatory OpenAI but pro Microsoft position. This may be a battle for the whole company, not just a personality thing.

It’s how hyped it was and expectations set by Skyrim. Starfield was seen as the next step on from Skyrim in terms of game scale, and Bethesda hyped it up as their biggest and best game ever. It’s neither of those things.

Also frankly in terms of RPGs, it feels dated. Witcher 3 set a new bar for what an RPG should be, but Starfield doesn’t seem to have learnt those lessons. Baldurs Gate 3 has also set a high bar for RPGs this year, and Cyberpunk 2077 (for all its own flaws) also set a high bar for RPGs.

Starfield is an ok game but when it’s hyped as it going to be the greatest game ever from Bethesda and going to be biggest game of the year, I’m not surprised it’s being shat on when it turns out it’s not.

But hopefully Starfield will be an important bump on the road for Bethesda. Bigger is not necessarily better and hopefully that lesson will carry in to Elder Scrolls VI.

Yeah reptuational is part of the issue but there is also a big financial issue too. Delaying a game is financially difficult as it affects financial projects for each year with shareholders (who only care about share price growth). If you release a game in a poor state you get to hit some of the financial targets which benefits the publisher particularly, but for the developer it means longer terms sales are much lower as reviews and feedback come in that the game is crap. You then have to patch and repair the game.

Patching has allowed publishers and developers to get away with this releasing of games in bad states, but it doesn’t change that fundamental issue which disproportionately affects the developer. Dev studios often only have 1 game being worked on at a time. An unready early release which is poorly recieved can be an existential crisis. For publishers, a poorly recieved game is a disappointment but generally have other many other games also on release so they can move on and not care as much.

No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are high profile exceptions. The gaming world is littered with abandoned flops, often due to not being ready for release.