Combat always ages poorly, because anything happening in real time requires muscle memory. As developers develop new combat mechanisms, it is constantly getting incrementally better. It’s like trying to compare a modern performance car to a Model T, or an '89 honda accord. The 65 Shelby Cobra doesn’t have bluetooth or antilock brakes or passenger airbags, but there are many enthusiastic fans of the car today. The modern Shelby Mustang is essentially a remake with modern tech trying to capture the spirit of the original.

That’s what we want. We want Morrowind, but better. The classic is still the classic, so we don’t need that again. Modders can reskin the game with better graphics.

Plumbing would still be a job without capitalism. Actually, come to think about it, plumbing is just about the least capitalist job there is. Most plumbers are small businesses owned by the laborers. Plumbing products are all mass produced, but the actual plumber is valued for their skills, not because they have the capital to corner a market. Plumbers in areas where corporate conglomerates are common are usually protected by unions, too.

If you want a job that wouldn’t exist without capitalism, the answer is farmer. Sure, farmers are the backbone of any society, but farmers work the land, and the land has a lot of conditions. But you can buy avocados in Michigan in January, because someone realized that they can make money shipping avocados from warmer climates year round. It’s terrible for the land, terrible for the environment, and terrible for local farmers who cannot compete in the race to the bottom, but the capitalist cares not for these things. Only profit nourishes the soul of the corporation.

Don’t forget to take your medication today.

No joke, ChatGPT has been a game changer for my linux education. Tutorials and guides are great, but it’s either a step-by-step instruction on doing exactly one thing, or it’s a general overview that assumes you already know everything.

ChatGPT doesn’t judge your gaps in knowledge, it just answers questions. Those answers are frequently wrong, but then so are the answers I get on message boards. The other nice thing is that I can copy and paste code or error logs, and it will parse the information and tell me what to look for.

I still follow guides and ask real humans for help when I need it, but I try an AI first.

I agree, but I can understand why BlueSky is doing better. A key component of the quality of the product is the number of users. I’m not active on either of them, but I do have a Mastodon account I barely use because it feels lonely.

Yep this is the only difference. Bluesky is promoted by the business owners, so it will have more activity and probably more consistent development and support. At the same time, it is a business and enshittification axioms still apply.

I did something similar with an old spare phone for a while when my actual phone screen stopped working. I carried both around, but I found 90% of my use cases didn’t involve phone calls or even texting.

I do find it convenient to have my phone connected to tailscale so I can access my home network from anywhere.

And I don’t necessarily trust public wifi.

But otherwise, I fully support this and think it’s entirely viable for most people.

I remember when “Remember Digg?” was a meme on early Reddit.

Imagine if the whole show was like that. Maybe not every song, but maybe after a 45 minute set, the band walks off, and if the crowd is still into it, they come back out. As a fan, you remember all the shows where everyone was disappointed that the band didn’t keep playing more encores, but I bet the bands remember every show where the crowd couldn’t care less.

Cuts both ways. They have included both, but they treat them the same. This allows them to handwave away any reasonable objections that they are not the same thing, because it doesn’t make a difference to them.

I think, since future Bill and Ted appear to the earlier Bill and Ted, and Rufus directly assists in creating his future, I think we have to assume that all of those historical figures always experienced those things, and then returned to their timelines with knowledge of the future. Napoleon rode the waterloops before Waterloo. Socrates played catch with Billy the Kid. Those are historical events, as much as Rufus and Future Bill and Ted helping present Bill and Ted pass their classes.

So the arc speed increases as the radius decreases, both in cutting and reading.

I always assumed that the initial cutting of the record accounts for the variation in speed as the needle moves towards the center. If that’s the case, the information density would be relatively consisten, because the size of the bits of information would get smaller as the speed increases. Like a second of the song could be measured in radians, with the centimeters on the arc getting smaller. But I don’t actually know if that’s how it works.

With one linear timeline, you basically have Back to the Future rules. You can go back and change things, even if it rewrites you out of existence. Of course, there are some logical paradoxes that arise from that theory of time, so most versions rely on some delayed repair mechanism, like how the photo of Marty slowly disappears, or how The Ancient One explains the Time Stone to Professor Hulk. Time Cop, Butterfly Effect, and Looper do the same, with changes going into immediate effect like old injuries becoming later scars in real time, but erasing yourself really ought to be devastating to spacetime itself. I liked the concept in Butterfly Effect where the time traveler experiences all the memories of their new life in the altered timeline with every new change, but then they abandon the hard sci-fi aspect to get cute with stigmata. Donnie Darko probably handles it the best, where time travel itself creates a universe-ending paradox that requires the destruction of the time traveler.

Essentially, you jump from now back to another location in spacetime where you didn’t exist the first time around. If you overlap with yourself, you’re either going to gain a new retroactive memory, or there’s some magical maguffin that erased the memory (like the Tardis does for the Doctor), or some universal force reconciles the timestream and eliminates the paradox.

It depends on how you imagine time travel and causality. Is it a stable time loop? Or do you visit another version of reality with different outcomes? When you travel, are you unraveling the course of history to be redone? Or are you visiting an unyielding etching of the timespace continuum? If time is a set of dimensions, as all modern physics supports, then theoretically it wouls be possible to move through those dimensions in all directions. Special relativity confirms that movement affects how you move through time, but if you go backwards in time, you are still moving forward from your own reference point. That’s the only way to retain your memories.

You don’t need to be particularly intelligent to see it. Case in point, I can see it.

If something is free, then you’re the product. Your data will be used for whatever the storage provider would like. For example, Google Photos was initially very generous with storage, because they were using your photos to train their recognition software. Gmail is reading your emails to build out your advertising profile. Your data is a commodity, and your privacy, if you protect it, is valuable.

The best way to do what you’re asking for, to ensure privacy and security, is to self-host. There’s an initial cost, and some maintenance fees over time, but you’ll also be investing in learning valuable skills in your free time.

Not for nothing, but those reality shows are often staged. If they “find” something interesting and potentially valueable every episode, you can bet it was probably planted. Most people store old furniture and clothing in storage units, and people probably wouldn’t even recognize their own stuff. A box of old coats? A generic cherry armoire from the 1980s? Old documents? Even bulky sporting goods like skis and golf clubs don’t have any actual value.

That’s not to say they never find something valuable, but they might obfuscate where exactly it came from to try to reduce lawsuits. If they find anything that could be easily identified by the original owner, especially if it is extremely valuable, they aren’t going to put that into the show at all.

No, but then it probably isn’t for me. I also haven’t seen Glitter. I might have gone to see it if Coppola was there to lead a discussion on the themes of the film, though. Good or bad, that would be a fascinating experience.

I remember one time at the Philadelphia Film Fest, I saw a terrible movie starring Alan Cumming and David Boreanaz, and while I didn’t think it was a great film, Boreanaz was there for a post-film Q&A. Cumming might have also been there, but it’s hard to remember exactly who was on the panel. I just vivdly remember Boreanaz because he mentioned his dad was in the audience, and he pointed to the guy seated next to me. Regardless, it would be fun to hear any creator talk about their labor of love, their process, and what they were trying to create.

I think this sentiment reveals one of the major flaws within the movie industry, specifically that reviewers feel compelled to watch (and review) movies. But going to the movies is a self-selecting process. If you don’t enjoy Hallmark Christmas movies because they are all the same, or you hate comic book movies because you’ve seen all of them, or you think auteur experiments are self-indulgent and pointless, you can just watch something else. Those movies weren’t made for you.

But capitalism has turned snark into a commodity. People don’t click on glowing reviews. Take-downs, drama, and wit entertain readers the same way that Hallmark Christmas movies do. The audience and the creators attract each other.

If you want it to go away, the best advice remains the catchy jingle by Paul Anka and Lisa Simpsons: “Just don’t look.”