dumpsterlid

You could definitely train a dog to do this and it would probably have a blast doing it all day.

Not enough dog investors pushing dog-tech hype though. It is a shame though, have you ever read about what their noses can do??

You mean it is exactly optimized to extend our conscious and unconscious biases to gray areas in an inconsistent and arbitrary way?

I love how many doors termux forces open, it totally changes the fundamental capabilities of android.

Ulysses is as an absolutely incredible book, the Martello tower in the morning with Stephen and Mulligan looking out at the “snotgreen sea” will forever live rent free in my head.

yawn another libertarian blaming things on too much government.

I could sure use some more government right now cracking down on industries with oligopolies that feel no threat of consequence for completely undermining the quality of their products while raising prices.

Who says way too much art is being made? There are a dizzying array of video games outs there but there is still clearly plenty room for more.

The problem is the exploitive way we set up these industries. Right now we have most of the big game companies seemingly poised to try to fire all the bulk of their artists/employees in favor of ai and it goes going to fail spectacularly but the damage to human workers in the industry will be long lasting all the same.

yawn I’m sorry but why do we need a corporation to profit off of the social network we use? I am not excited for any new corporate social network because after using mastodon and lemmy it has become crystal clear that social networks as a “technology” are a terrible business. Either you make a social network healthy for its users or you profit off of them. Pick one.

It is like the concept of hospitals being privatized businesses. It is insane when you step back and actually think about it. Do I want the doctors, nurses, janitors and staff to get paid for doing hard work at the hospital?

Absolutely! Why does an abstract entity, the financial instrument of a private hospital, need to profit off of my care?

Hey I see a bright future for companies selling the service of turnkey lemmy, mastodon, pixelfed and peertube instances so maybe Facebook can get into that and be a nice little small reasonable company helping instance admins out instead of a monstrously poorly run corporation that tears apart the social fabric of society for profit.

:)

edit wait did this article seriously just call the guy running the open source project mastodon, “CEO”…?

We just need to move on from DnD to other IPs at this point, it is absurdly clear that everyone putting all their eggs in the basket with wizards of the coast and it is just a bad idea.

There are plenty of fantastic alternatives, we really don’t need the DnD universe. I mean, as highly acclaimed as BG3 is, people in general seem to feel that the dev’s previous game Divinity Original Sin 2 has better combat mechanics… so idk I just think it’s time to move past wizards of the coast and embrace better systems.

This really is the most salient point in this entire thread, there are piles of people commenting about this article with literally the same argument that was used to try to kick the can about ending slavery down the road.

“ He may have furthered his own interests but did he also further the interests of the US more effectively than most could?”

Hahahahaha nope, he literally was just a leech on society that got into high enough positions that his vapid bullshitting didn’t just fool his bosses into paying him a good wage but directly contributed to the deaths of countless innocent humans… for absolutely zero good reason from any perspective other than kissingers. Seriously this isn’t serial killer level stuff, this is war criminal mass murderer levels off violence and he never ever faced any real consequences for it.

I am not religious but Kissinger makes me want to believe in hell just so I can fall asleep with the comforting thought that Kissinger is burning in hell forever. He deserves nothing less, rest in piss, Kissinger.

“screen time” is such a nonsense phrase. Sure make sure your kid gets physical exercise but to primarily define and rate the value of an experience a child is having primarily based on whether it is on a screen or not is hilariously myopic especially among people that supposedly claim to have a progressive view of technology.

The question is WHAT is the child doing on that screen? Are they blobbing out or are they playing a video game that stimulates and challenges their brain (a strategy game, even action games) or socializing with friends in a video game learning how to conflict manage and operate as an effective social group? (minecraft is full of this).

I mean we ruined the world for kids, I can’t blame them for looking to virtual worlds to transcend the hellhole we left them even a little bit. Sure, the kids should just “go outside” and play in the… development full of huge pickups that aren’t even designed to able to see children (they kind of look custom designed to run over children actually), with no public spaces to explore and play in, no sidewalks leading from the development to anywhere else and endless strip malls, parking lots and cars as far as the eye can see…

Their brain is going to be healthier engaging with good video games than that landscape.

I understand trees require maintenance to upkeep, but at the same time I actively avoid going to places and spending money there when it is hot (or cold and windy and exposed) and there are no trees. I get anxiety when everything is just large featureless concrete and asphalt expanses with zero shade or green color. I am sure I am not alone in this, so in a sense the presence of trees tends to bring in more shoppers to an area.

Personally I think it is kind of sociopathic when we build large population centers and plant zero trees or worse cut down old trees in an older town/city and never bother to plant new trees so that tree cover is maintained.

Imagine still thinking the war on drugs is a good idea in 2023

> I spent a couple hours browsing Lemmy instances today and I was shocked at how few users are needed to create replacement communities. Communities with about 2k users feel sparse, but good enough IMO.

It has become a joke on the fediverse that it is going to die any moment, tech journalists have written article after article over the years saying mastodon failed, it is going to die, it will never virally scale like venture capital funded corporate social networks did…

What they never understand is the localized perspective of someone in one of the small communities on the fediverse. Who individually actually cares if 1000, 5000, 100,000, 2 million…… or whatever abstractly large number of users are active on the fediverse? If you look up and see a handful, perhaps 60 active users who all genuinely engage with you and are interesting to talk to then the presumed fantastical future of a freer, fediverse of connected social networks existing outside of the rat race of corporate, consumption focused social media is already here…

Yes a small minority of people are currently experiencing that future, but it becomes undeniable that future can exist for everybody, it is a matter of simply more people waking to it when they please. The fediverse can exist as just a pebble on the shore of a corporate internet that dwarfs it, yet the potential always persists that the fediverse could destabilize and overthrow it all by virtue of being enough, just as a mere pebble, to bring meaning to the very next person who stumbles upon it.

Super cool! A separate fan community like this is huge for longterm fan/community building. It also totally fits the ethos of star trek itself.

There are reddit-likes on the fediverse (which means they are using the ActivityPub protocol). The fact that a software like kbin works on ActivityPub means that users on other fediverse software like Mastodon (twitter-like) can interact with posts on kbin. Discussion, interaction and discoverability are thus not limited to just the small community on kbin. https://kbin.social/

Here is a discussion by @feditips@mstdn.social on reddit alternatives on the fediverse. https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110476830253102884

I couldn't disagree more, Forged Alliance Forever or Beyond All Reason are infinitely more interesting to watch if you don't care about obnoxious micro skills.

What is the point of making the data structure any more complex than:

  2011/03/15   Trader Joe's
      Expenses:Groceries   $100.00
      Assets:Checking
  2011/03/15   Whole Food Market
      Expenses:Groceries   $75.00
      Assets:Checking

I don't even need to explain the data structure to you, it is self evident. Any number of sophisticated functions can be built into an interpreter of the ledger data, but all of those complex functions never obscure the basic data which can be edited by hand in a plain text editor if desired. Or you can use ledger-mode in emacs and enter transactions through prompts so you don't have to manually structure the whitespace for it to look nice. However complex you desire, you can use ledger in that fashion, that is the strength of its minimalism.

Like I said elsewhere in this thread, I like to use ledger inside codeblocks in org mode (org-babel) in a simplistic application of literate programming. The extremely human readable nature of ledger's data structure is a natural fit for the similarly human readable org format, and in export of an org file into a website, html document, pdf or other media (via pandoc) ledger codeblocks remain human readable, even to someone who has never heard of ledger-cli. This means that an org file tracking a complex project with associated costs at each step (though ledger can track anything with units, including time) can be easily converted into a professional quality document that can be used in any number of contexts.

The professional outward facing document used for conveying information about a project to others can thus originate out of the same org file that is being used to work on the project itself. In other words, your notes are only a step or two away from a presentation in any number of formats.

When you want only the finances from the project file, just tangle it out and treat it like a normal ledger file.

I am not really sure if ledger-cli has any capacity to create compound units, so that if you say log that you have eaten one potato in ledger-cli, you would also have to manually log the calories and macro-nutrients of that potato unless you had kept a template for that potato's nutritional profile you could copy paste somewhere right? I suppose you might be able to make a "potato" ledger file with its associated nutrient profiles and just load it from a code block every time you eat one. Idk.

I think ledger-cli is much more interesting in a literate programming style with it embedded into code blogs in org mode than just by itself. Not just for money either (ledger-cli can track anything with units), say you wanted to do a major home improvement project and needed a large amount of materials that may be used at multiple stages of the project. Ledger in this case is really useful as a way to tally up how many nails, boards, and other materials you might need. You can keep tallies of materials needed (and used) embedded into the broader context (what the materials will be used for) but still tangle out an overall tally of all materials needed and used.

Another example could be creating a meal plan for a long trip with many meals that you have to bring all the ingredients with you.

Ledger has so many more potential use cases than just as a way to track money, and ledger is so much more useful in org babel than by itself, it is an ideal compliment to org mode for managing large projects with lots of fiddly bits of defined types and units (which honestly can be time too, I kind of prefer it to org mode's clock system).

Exactly anti-piracy measures only punish paying customers because the pirated version won't have them. I think several big name musicians (with the money to pay for a software license) have been caught using the pirated version of music software simply because the pirated version doesn't require some stupid BS that the legal version does. I.e. you can get it running on your gigging laptop and not have to worry about juggling how many computers are currently using your license, stupid iLok usb dongles or some other nonsense. The pirated version just works.

Further, 99% of digital audio workstation customers start off as broke kids with no money to feasibly drop on a music production software that costs $150 or more. So a huge amount of future paying DAW customers are piracy converts anyways. Making a DAW that can't be pirated is a sure way to shove your future customer base onto somebody else's DAW that can.

Yeah Reaper isn't open source, but the licensing system is an amazing breath of fresh air. You can just download it and start using it with no account sign up process and once the free trial (60 days) ends all that happens is a nag screen pops up. You can literally just keep closing the nag screen and never buy the software (though this is an illegal use of the product) but why would you do that if you have the money to support the devs? I bought it as soon as I realized how easy it was to demo and start using.

If one of the primary points of open source software is to promote accessibility, Reaper goes a long way towards this without actually being open source. There is no DRM, there is no need to make an account and do some long sign up process to get Reaper up and running, there is no iLok required (vomits in mouth a little). You can download it in and start working on a project as quickly as your computer can finish installing it.

From Reaper's license popup:

> We are showing this message, instead of crippling this evaluation version of REAPER, because we do not feel technological enforcement of licensing policy is in the best interest of our customers

Reaper is the only professional artistic software (sold as a product) I have ever come across that is remotely realistic about how people use it. Nobody has ever pirated Reaper in the history of Reaper, there is no point and that is how software should work in a more sane world.

> In all honesty it is truly no different than being an alcoholic or a crack addict.

This is an awful thing to casually throw out there in the faces of people who rely on ADHD medication to manage their ADHD.

FYI we are extremely lucky to have good audiobook versions of all three of Pynchon's big novels:

Gravity's Rainbow (George Guidal) Against The Day (Dick Hill) Mason & Dixon (Steven Crossley).

I highly recommend Pynchon, you have to relearn how read when reading one of his more dense works. It is a demanding experience in letting go of your expectations, need to understand and general framework for reading normal books you have probably relied on most of your adult life. The work of unlearning and relearning how to read is a reward in itself but additionally Pynchon is just so much smarter, more well rounded, and politically conscious than similar Big Dense Novel writers.

Take for example how Pynchon focuses so much on the Herero people and the genocide Germany inflicted on them (in 1904-1908) in a novel about WW2 (Gravity's Rainbow). It feels anachronistic and unrelated until you step back and see Pynchon's argument about war, colonialism and whiteness venting off the brutal inhumanity of Europe until one day it inevitably came home. This has become a much more popular way of framing WW1 and WW2 as time has gone by (because it is the right one) but Gravity's Rainbow was written in the 70s long before people were really talking about things this way.

Pynchon in my opinion diagnoses the sickness and violence at the heart of western society and tracks how it evolved into a globalist structure of business in the 20th century better than almost any other writer.

You can fault Pynchon for many many things (though I love him) but "carrying on a post-modernist tradition" is probably the last thing you could possibly fault him for.

Pynchon is one of the most esoteric artists I have ever encountered in any medium. He did take a lot of inspiration from how Henry James writes in a sentence/paragraph level (see Pugnax the talking dog who reads Henry James all day in ATD) but his work ends up being something entirely different.

"And that kind of pseudo-telepathy might even require the meandering and the density and the apparent overcomplication to deliver you enough context to align your neurons into something approximating where the author's were at."

Absolutely, postmodern literature is an extension of modernism (i.e. To The Lighthouse or Ulysses) in that it is focused on describing the moment to moment experience of consciousness, except postmodern literature like Pynchon's work dials everything up until the replicated experience of consciousness is the experience of a psychedelic state.

This results in confounding literature where it is difficult to deduce what is real, what the point is, and to orient oneself. This is unavoidably a necessary part of inducing such an intense mental state in the reader.

Somehow I doubt one of the essays in this book is about how to write female characters in a way that isn’t creepy, and reductively sexual.

Murakami’s writing is undeniably creative and interesting, but the way he writes women undermines the whole thing and I find it weird he gets a pass for that so much.

This was why I knew the metaverse was going to be a failure, it was clear as day there were business executives acting with so much self confidence about what the future of virtual experiences will be..... while ignoring the entire medium of designing virtual experiences and all of the collective wisdom learned from successes and failures.

It is like a successful painter annoucing a new revolutionary form of art that involves sounds arranged in time to create artistic experiences instead of paint on a canvas.

A bic pen isn't a bad pen, it is stunningly successful type of pen.

There are meaningful differences between how it feels to write with a fountain pen or other type of nice pen vs a bic but there is no reason you might not just prefer how a bic writes.

I like the relaxed, but controlled feeling of a fountain pen. Writing with bic like pens my whole life I got into the habit of gripping the pen hard and pressing down hard and it made me hate writing.

As someone who loves the writing feel of fountain pens I have to say the a pilot G2 is not an unfancy pen. The writing feel and ink quality is superb.

Yes the G2 is cheap, but evaluated along metrics of writing feel and ink quality the G2 is a fancy pen in my opinion. Everytime I pick up a G2 I enjoy the experience immensely.

I mean, I love my fountain pens more but the G2 deserves respect as a premium writing tool you can buy in grocery store.

Where is your evidence for that?